StarCraft, Nothing But StarCraft

Now that the news has been out for a few days and game journalists have had a chance to chat with the folks at Blizzard, there are a number of new stories detailing parts of the StarCraft II world. A massive press briefing about the game fills in a few more details on the game; only three factions, no new races, the game is built with competitive play in mind, and will run on both XP and Vista. For more nitty-gritty elements, the company held panel discussions on the art design and gameplay elements of the upcoming game. Video from the event is now widely available as well; check out the official trailer, some example gameplay, or the epic 22-minute long developer walkthrough.

Re:Who cares about XP and Vista?

[PygmySurfer]

That's a good question. I suppose it could be a few things - it forces them to develop better code by targetting several platforms, maybe they've been using the same tools over the years, and the tools make it easy to target the Mac as well, maybe they've sold enough Mac products in the past to make it profitable to continue to do so (though it's hard to support this theory - recent releases have contained the Mac/Win binaries on the same disc - maybe they could tell by battle.net/World of Warcraft connections just how many of each platform are connecting), or maybe they just love the Mac platform. Regardless of the reason, Blizzard should be applauded for the effort, and other devs should take notice.

Re:Who cares about XP and Vista?

[DarkFencer]

Blizzard's sales usually dwarf the average PC game. Many developers cannot justify the added cost when it will bring them sales in the 10000-20000 range.

Blizzard's games have such large sales numbers that even their Mac sales are significant and easily warrant it. If the number of Linux gamers (that don't use Wine/Cedega and don't dual boot to Windows) was significant - I'd imagine they'd have a Linux version as well.

GOML

[MeanderingMind]

Too many young'ns with Apple Powerbooks these days.

Back in the day if you wanted a game on your Mac you had very few options. Blizzard, Bungie, Maxis, Broderbund and MacSoft were about it. If you had a Mac back then and gamed you knew these names.

Even if a game was ported to the Mac by some other developer, it was usually horrendously buggy, slow, and you could only play with other Mac players (I'm looking at you Age of Kings).

These facts didn't really begin to change until the iMacs came out and Macs became "cool", or at least popular after some fashion. Of course, it sort of went hand in hand with the decline of PC gaming.

Anyway, get off my lawn.

Re:Starcraft II is all well and good...

[BJH]

Shit, you should see it on my 1920x1200 LCD monitor.

I'd pay 20 bucks for an extension to D2 that updated its graphics to 2007 standards, even if they didn't change anything else (well, maybe a few bugfixes would be nice - like the friggin' Trang-Oul's FCR bug...)

internet play

[Anonymous Cowpat]

"Pardo also suggested that Warcraft III might have been a more forgiving game for beginners--differences in skill levels seemed less pronounced in that game. The VP said that in Starcraft II, there will be many more nuances that will separate highly skilled players from beginners, and good players from great ones"

So it's going to be crap online then? People don't like getting beaten. They partcicularly don't like getting beaten outright by players who, in the grand scheme of things, are only slightly better than themselves. Trying to make that happen more will just make multiplayer starcraft rubbish. Here's hoping they do a map editor to rival War3's, we can then have enjoyable custom maps at least.

Re:Game resolution

[caramelcarrot]

Absolutely, after I played Supreme Commander I can't stand RTSs that don't allow zooming out.

My only request(s)...

[mattgreen]

This isn't some lame complaint about how it doesn't run on an OS that nobody runs.

I hope that Blizzard quits defining 'skill' as how fast a player can click, especially when we're using the mouse to play. I don't mean to overstate this - the better player is going to win, usually. But it is very telling that pro SC1 players measure clicks per second. And while it is 'athletic' in one sense, I am not fond of risking carpal tunnel syndrome just so I can be good at a computer game.

The most glaring aspect of this is in the limitation of units that can be selected at once. If you watch the gameplay videos, there are a huge number of zerglings that attack simultaneously. How backwards is it that although that is feasible in Starcraft (probably not to that scale) it is a huge pain in the ass? In order to do it you need to separate them out into groups of 12, and assign them to number keys along the top. To attack, you'd hit the 1 key, then hit a, and click behind the attack point. Now, you need to repeat that step for every group. The first group will get there slightly before the others because they have a head start, which is inefficient if you're trying to swarm the enemy. The natural thing would be to double click on the zerglings, and have them ALL be selected at once. I'm glad to see that Rob Pardo is working on SC2, but I know he has strong feelings on this sort of thing. I can't recall the exact reason, but I believe the cap is in SC1 for the purpose of 'encouraging smaller battles.' Sorry, but if they've played it at all, it just doesn't work that way. People get into bigass battles all the time, that is half the fun of SC1. And it is aggravating to know that the UI doesn't scale with the scope of battles. Oftentimes, you don't have control over how big the battle gets.

I want to focus on the action, not the fifty inane things needed to sustain the action. I understand and appreciate that some of it has to happen, but it can be rather unpleasant sometimes. One example of this is building units. In particular, you should be able to build multiple unit production buildings, issuing build requests and they are load-balanced between the two, i.e. if I want two marines, and I have two barracks, I should be able to select both barracks, and ask for two marines. Both barracks would build one simultaneously. Currently, the Blizzard games allow you to queue, but do not load-balance in this way. If you wanted to do what I just described, you need to select each building individually. More clicks, more thought needed to accomplish a common goal. Another example is unit queuing. This is fairly common among RTS games now, but it is a shame that the Blizzard games effectively penalize you for using it. I say this because they deduct the unit cost when you queue the unit - not when the unit starts being built. For the period of time between the queue and the unit being built, you have fewer resources available to expend in the event of an emergency. (The interesting thing is you are not charged for upkeep of the queued unit until it starts production.) The hyperactive player who can remember to build units right when they come out does not suffer from having less available resources. In the event of a financial emergency, they can divert resources without needing to stop the queue of units.

Nevertheless, I have high hopes for this game, and will probably upgrade my PC to play.

Re:Who cares about XP and Vista?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I have to wonder why Blizzard consistently releases their titles for Mac.

Money.

I buy all their games as a result, but what's their motivation?

Money.

(surely the sales are far far lower).

Sales are lower? Lower than what, the number of potential buyers if they don't support the Mac?

Do you have any doubt that Startcraft 2 will be among the top 20 titles of the year? Blizzard doesn't have any doubt. Now take a look at the top 20 titles of 2006. How many of them currently offer a Mac version? Gee, pretty much all of them do. Why do you suppose that is? Maybe because it is profitable?

The real question is "why wouldn't a develop make a Mac version?" The answer is, it costs sore up front to build nice, portable code. If the initial investment is a big concern and you don't know if there will be a payoff, it sometimes makes sense to cut corners and develop just for DirectX+Windows. Then, if your game is a flop, you've lost less money. If your game is a success, you can shell out to port the code. The thing is, this latter method, costs more money overall than just writing portable code. Thus, any company that is sure their game will be successful (Blizzard, Id, etc.) tend to plan for the Mac version from the onset. There are a few exceptions to this rule, almost all of whom are owned by Microsoft.

pretty, but the same

[nuzak]

Still no appreciable terrain, just two non-deformable levels flat as a griddle. Units still pretty much just walk up and stand still while they grind each other down. Everything still explodes cleanly with no wreckage to block the way or mark the battle. Nothing in the demo resembling high level orders ("attack and move" doesn't constitute high level order).

I guess Blizzard is smart to not mess with a formula that works, but the operative word here is "formula". I guess I can wait til it's in the bargain bin.

Re:Blizzard failed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait. You're joking, right? You're claiming that the sequel to game that is built entirely on Blizzards original IP is a ripoff of a fan project. Furthermore, and fan project dedicated to recreating the original (in another Blizzard game mind you). Further yet, a fan project you haven't played because it's not bloody well done?!
Who's letting these kids sit unattended on the internet?

Starcraft still looks good

[AlpineR]

Starcraft may run at 640 x 480 but it still looks nice even on a much higher resolution monitor. The artists did an amazing job with that game. I reinstalled it a couple years ago and was surprised that it still looks pretty good compared to modern games. Some old games (like Diablo II) look very pixelated, but Starcraft has great anti-aliasing, animation, and structure that looks nice despite the relatively primitive technology. It's a lot like a well-designed font that's readable even when it's scaled too small for a simplistic vector-to-pixel translation to work.

Re:Game resolution

[physicsnick]

The reason is because it slows down your control over the battlefield. The unit proportions in Starcraft were designed with a static camera in mind; that means battlecruisers, which in reality would be enormous ships, are really only six or so marines long on screen. This means you can individually control your marines and your battlecruisers simultaneously without worrying about the zoom level; you can give split-second decisions to each of your units, and the game view lends itself perfectly to that.

On the other hand, Supreme Commander was designed with a zoom camera in mind, which means they took the liberty of using more realistic proportions for their units. In theory you could control all your troops on the same zoom level, but in reality the zoom camera is anything but optional; the unit proportions force you to zoom in and out to give your troops individual tactical orders. It makes even the simplest tactical commands, such as focus firing, difficult, tedious, and extremely slow to execute.

Terrain

[AlpineR]

Did you actually watch the gameplay video? The ramps are inclined and debris from air units slides down the ramps into piles at the base. I didn't see whether the debris hampers movement but the narrator hinted that it would. There were also big freaking craters in the ground after the nuclear strike. I'll be surprised if those don't have more than a cosmetic effect.

And yes, there were only two noticeable levels of terrain shown, but there might be more possible on different maps. Heck, even original Starcraft actually has at least three levels for certain terrain types. Most people just choose to play on maps like Big Game Hunters and Lost Temple that only use two of them.

Re:My only request(s)...

[Rolgar]

I really wish they'd reduce the amount of micro-management and clicking it takes to build an army. It would be nice if you could set a non-stop auto-build order for a building, with an optional cap (stop building when active units = 50, etc.), set ratios for different units built in the same buildings so that it could build 2 of one unit, one of another, and alternate until they hit their caps.

I'd also like to see combat be more deadly, where one or two shots would kill a basic unit, but many shots don't hit. Units should have a setting to play risky or safe (chase a fleeing enemy, take cover under fire). More advanced units could come from being promoted from units that have succeeded as weaker units, similar to RPG leveling up (Kill 5 enemies or 1 tank, and he's qualified to become a machine gunner, special forces or a sniper, aim and rate of fire improves, etc).

Some of these could be optional settings that people could pick and choose when setting up multiplayer games.

Re:My only request(s)...

[mattgreen]

I am inexperienced. I'd love to enjoy the game in all its technical details, but it is such a pain in the ass to play. You do not need to tell me what 'pro' players do. Of course they play at maximum efficiency. The thing is, I don't want to be 'good' at precision clicking on units, I want to be good at the actual game portion of it.

You point out the group limit isn't a hindrance because there is a workaround. Sounds more like a tacit admission that it is artificial. Alt-clicking does not completely solve the problem, you are still issuing multiple commands when one would suffice. In regard to load balancing, it'd be only among the buildings currently selected. You do not want to limit the options available to a player or force them to work in a certain way. Having it automatically work on all buildings of a certain type would be asinine. I am no stranger to hotkeying the buildings, or placing them properly. I just find the UI shortcuts provided by Blizzard to be incapable of handling the sheer number of disparate tasks that need to be done to play Starcraft at any sort of decent level.

I am not sure how this is making it a less competitive game. The more the UI aids the user in doing tedious things, the more fun it is to play. This has nothing to do with dumbing down the game. Like I said earlier, I won't weep at all if the excessive mouse skills are no longer mandatory to play. I already use the mouse too much during the day at my tech job.

Re:My only request(s)...

[toad3k]

I have to agree with the original poster. I played for awhile and was fairly good. Nonetheless these difficulties in unit training, queuing, and unit selecting were mostly not intended. No one at blizzard said, "Hey, lets substitute in some bad UI design that a more seasoned player can overcome to beat his opponents."

These tricks you've learned are crutches. You are apparently good at using crutches. You like them because you are better at using crutches than the average player, but don't think for a minute that these crutches are part of the game or that they enhance game play in the least.

I would like to see resources stay unused until unit starts building. Ability to make command centers rally their scvs on resources instead of sitting there. To select multiple buildings at once and hotkey them and use them to train. To be able to queue future commands on units that are in the process of building something. To research upgrades one after another in order. To allow infinite unit selection (already done). To queue units that aren't yet available while an advanced structure is building or upgrading. An easier way to select similar units that are mixed in a big blob of different units. A defend as well as a follow command. None of these is game breaking, but they allow you to get the base building done and forget about it for a couple minutes to manage combat or expansion.

I do not want scripting capability that some people are stupidly advocating. Anything that could be done in the background besides simple key rearrangement would be detrimental to barrier to entry and professional play. I also don't want it to start anticipating things like building overlords when it thinks you need them.

Re:My only request(s)...

[toad3k]

This is not a legitimate complaint. Instead of having one click make a unit in every building, instead you could make it so that each clicks creates a unit in whichever barracks will be available in the least time.

In your example, if you wanted two marines and two ghosts, you'd select two barracks, and click marine, ghost, marine, ghost. The units would be assigned barracks one, then two, then probably one because marines have shorter train times, then possibly one again because maybe it takes longer for one ghost to train than two marines. You shouldn't have to think about such minutia especially when the barracks are smack dab next to each other.

I can't think of any downside to this.

Re:Diversity in the races

[Maian]

Protoss in general has the most powerful starcraft, so I'm not surprised that countering carriers is difficult.

With that said, here's my experience with countering them:

• Prevent them from getting too many carriers. All those BGH players like to bunker up and tech up, leading to this types of situations. These tech tactics are vulnerable to rushing, which is why most custom BGH games have the 15-min no rush rules. If you're playing a normal game, I will guarantee you that pure teching will get you no where if you're playing against an enemy that knows how to scout and rush. If the Protoss player has the time and resources to build up a fleet of carriers, you're probably already losing.
• Protoss: Psi Storm. 'nuf said. Corsairs work too.
• Terran: Valkyries are the best counter. In fact, if the carriers don't have any escorts, valkyries are enough to take them out (though it'll take some time and the Protoss player will no doubt that withdrawn his carriers by then). Battlecruisers micro-ed well with their yamato cannons also work, but it's so easy to accidentally yamato an interceptor. Sci Vessel is nice, but it's a generic Protoss counter.
• Zerg: Personally, I think this race has it the hardest when countering carriers. Scourges are the obvious counter, but they are hard to micro, and it's easy to accidentally target an interceptor. If you're going ground, defilers are the best counter, since both their plague and dark swarm are really effective against carriers. Devourers are okay against carriers, but they are more of a counter against battlecruisers.

Re:internet play

[KillerCow]

I just want to be able to play casually without being completely destroyed every time by some kid who plays from his mom's basement for 20 hours a day.

I have no problems with them being better than me, I just want to play someone for fun.

Re:Game resolution

[Benaiah]

I think you missed the entire point of the game....
Starcraft is for Micro. Its all about the micro. Focus fire and all that.
Supreme Commander is about the Macro. You build an army you send it to attack.
Most units don't have user controlled special abilities as opposed to Starcraft. (see Starcraft: Psionic storm)

The whole point of Supreme Commander is to command an army, have a good army composition to counter your enemies. Not to focus fire on one marine at a time and rotate damaged units out.

So yeah... You missed the point of an awesome game.