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Real Time Strategy (Games)

StarCraft, Nothing But StarCraft 303

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.
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StarCraft, Nothing But StarCraft

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  • by SECProto ( 790283 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:34PM (#19224087)
    ...but what I'm really looking forward to is Diablo III. clickclick clickclickclickclickclick clickclick clickclickclick
    • by Ubergrendle ( 531719 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:29PM (#19225961) Journal
      As opposed to Starcraft 2. clickclick clickclicklclickclickclick (spacebar) clickclickclick click.
    • Who cares about SC2 ? I am still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever!
    • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @04:21PM (#19227915)
      One thing this article didn't mention: the Blizzard reps were asked whether there would be subscription fees attached to battle.net, and they refused to comment. Not even a peep.

      They were willing to give "tight-lipped" responses to plot spoilers, but this issue they wouldn't comment on at all.

      I can see why they'd want to keep silent if subscription fees are in the works for battle.net, as it would put a damper on the hype cyclone that's been stirred up in gaming news since its announcement. I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't just deny it if the option weren't at least on the table.

      Considering this game's market position (a blockbuster RTS hasn't been released in years and obviously there is great interest), Vivendi's/Blizzard's great post-RTS success with WoW, Starcraft's international appeal (especially in the launch country, South Korea, where subscription-based games across all genres make up the majority of the PC game market) and other previously non-subscription genres testing the waters (e.g. Hellgate: London [wikipedia.org], the "spiritual successor to Diablo" made by ex-Blizzard employees)... Starcraft 2 seems like the perfect property to add a monthly fee to -- even if it did rouse some negative sentiment, it would likely still be successful.

      I strongly suspect there's some form of fee in the works. If not, it would be nice if Blizzard would make that clear.
      • by osu-neko ( 2604 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @07:28PM (#19230403)

        I can't think of any reason why they wouldn't just deny it if the option weren't at least on the table.

        If they deny false rumors, then refusal to deny anything else becomes instant confirmation. So, unless it's your intention to broadcast all your plans to everyone ahead of time, you most both refuse to confirm true rumors and refuse to deny false ones. You must do both, you can't just do one or the other, or else there's no point in doing either.

  • by PygmySurfer ( 442860 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:36PM (#19224121)
    will run on both XP and Vista.

    Like most recent Blizzard releases, it will also ship simultaneously for the Mac [starcraft2.com].
    • by neoform ( 551705 ) <djneoform@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:44PM (#19224247) Homepage
      I have to wonder why Blizzard consistently releases their titles for Mac.. I buy all their games as a result, but what's their motivation? (surely the sales are far far lower)..
      • by PygmySurfer ( 442860 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:59PM (#19224503)
        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.
        • by Bobartig ( 61456 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:30PM (#19225987)
          Blizzard has said on multiple occasions that one of the primary reasons they release on both Mac and PC is quality. After farming out [I think it was] Starcraft's port to a 3rd party company, and having numerous problems and delays, they developed their own in-house port team for [maybe it was] diablo II. Working on both platforms allows them to find/fix more bugs and make a more solid product on both platforms.

          Some bugs will exist on both platforms, but reproduce easier on a particular one, so developing on PC (which is what I assume they do) while doing a concurrent port for Mac improves the end quality of both products.

          I'm a bit blurry on which game's porting they were miffed about, leading to performing the next major project in-house, so replace the two game titles above with ones that make sense to you.

          At any rate, I'm looking forward to the big collector's edition box, and playing Starcraft II on my mac.
          • by geekoid ( 135745 )
            If you know your making a game for Mac and PC, it behooves you to have a tollset that works on both. Properly done, it will matter little what platfore you develop on.
            QA is another animal.
      • by MeanderingMind ( 884641 ) * on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:03PM (#19224569) Homepage Journal
        Firstly, Blizzard has a long history of supporting Macs. From the very first WarCraft to WoW, they've always released Mac versions. Given the small number of Mac developers in the old days, that earned Blizzard a place in the home of every Mac gamer.

        Secondly, there simply wasn't competition. Blizzard didn't need to work hard on advertising because there was nothing else for people to buy. If you wanted an RTS on the Mac, you bought WarCraft or StarCraft. The other options were buggy, poorly ported, or otherwise incompatible with their PC brethren.

        Lastly, they are very good at game design. It's easy for them to program in such a way that a Mac version is barely an effort, as most of the data and code is stored and written in such a way as to be platform inspecific. It's good practice to begin with, and Blizzard does a good job of it.
        • If you wanted an RTS on the Mac, you bought WarCraft or StarCraft. The other options were buggy, poorly ported, or otherwise incompatible with their PC brethren.

          Ahem, I seem to remember another Mac developer known as Bungie that created some damn fine RTS games in the Myth series. Sadly, Bungie has sold their souls and fucked the very people that made them what they are. No Halo for Mac. Assholes.
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by DarkFencer ( 260473 )
        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.
        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by aichpvee ( 631243 )
          I don't think it's lack of players on Linux. They had a Linux client for WoW that shipped with the beta, though undocumented (if I remember correctly), but it was pulled from the retail version. WoW however runs great on Linux under WINE and I'm sure they have enough players doing so to "warrant" the port. Why they don't just do this, since it would be fucking easy for them, I have no idea.

          If I were conspiracy minded I'd say it had something to do with Linux posing a legitimate threat to windows if it on
      • by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:51PM (#19225321)

        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.

      • Are there fewer Mac users than Windows users? For sure. Are there fewer game studios developing for Macs? Erh... is there one but Blizzard?

        Name the RTS games that came out for the Mac recently. Well? Any? So if you want to play a RTS on a Mac, will you buy SC2?
    • by _xeno_ ( 155264 )

      The "XP and Vista" comment is to diffuse worries that StarCraft II would require DirectX 10 and therefore require Vista. There were rumors that StarCraft II would be DirectX 10-only, and Blizzard specifically addressed them by confirming it would support both DirectX 9 and 10, with the possibility of there being some DirectX 10-only effects.

      Since the linked article is on a "PC gaming" site (by which they really mean "Windows gaming"), it's not surprising it only mentioned the XP support. That's who their

      • My comment was really just to note that the Mac port was coming, not to criticize either the article or the summary (for once!). ;)
    • by Yvanhoe ( 564877 )

      Like most recent Blizzard releases, it will also ship simultaneously for the Mac
      Yes, using openGL instead of directX. Come on, a linux port must not be that difficult then !
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Kirth ( 183 )
      mod game down, "-1 overrated".

      Plus it does not run on $(OPENSOURCEOS)
  • Game resolution (Score:4, Interesting)

    by danbert8 ( 1024253 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:42PM (#19224225)
    From all the screenshots and demos it looks like very little of the battlefield is visible at a time. This is one thing I didn't like about Starcraft, but I understood because it ran at such a low resolution. I hope Starcraft II supports higher resolution or different battlefield zoom levels. Scrolling around all the time can be a pain in the ass.
    • Re:Game resolution (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Puff of Logic ( 895805 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:58PM (#19224485)

      From all the screenshots and demos it looks like very little of the battlefield is visible at a time. This is one thing I didn't like about Starcraft, but I understood because it ran at such a low resolution.
      Heh, I still habitually flick the scroll-wheel on my mouse whenever I boot up a game of Starcraft because I feel as though I'm zoomed in much too closely! I hope that SC2 will have a much greater (i.e. actually has one) zoom function, but that the demos are so closely zoomed in order to show unit details.

      Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.
      • Now what I'd really like to see is multi-monitor support that would give me a 2D map on my second monitor instead of the little minimap in the corner. SupCom kinda fired my imagination as to how useful that can be in an RTS. I rather suspect, however, that such a feature won't be seen because of the focus of competitive play and the lack of a second screen for many players.

        I doubt it. Blizzard tends to aim low with their specs and the zoom would be resource intensive. Also it would make players with less po
        • I doubt it. Blizzard tends to aim low with their specs and the zoom would be resource intensive. Also it would make players with less powerful computers have a distinct disatvantage because they could not zoom as quickly or as efficiently. War 3 both had a fixed aspect ratios specifically to give people the same view regaurdless of Monitor resolution. I could be wrong.

          No, you may well be correct. It's been a long time since I played WC3 so I couldn't recall whether a zoom function existed for that one or not. Now that I've thought about it a little more, I'm wondering exactly how much a zoom function would affect gameplay. I'm not a game designer so I have no idea exactly what sort of resources are required to implement a zoom. Is it so resource intensive that it would make a notable difference on lower-end computers that can otherwise handle the game?

          The crux of

          • Zooming shouldn't be an issue as long as the units scale in complexity properly, by switching to simpler models and smaller textures as you zoom out. I think the bigger issue is the tactical advantage having a larger field of view brings. I can understand the desire to keep that consistent for all players.
      • by jandrese ( 485 )
        I hope so too. Command and Conquer 3 has that same problem where you feel like you're scraping your nose on the ground because the camera is so tight. That screen size made sense when everybody was running 640x480, but at 1280x1204 it's just claustrophobic.
    • Yeah, I'd like to see zoom capability as well. It's such a basic thing! Bungie's "Myth: The Fallen Lords [wikipedia.org]" had this back in 1997. Not to mention that other more recent RTS games (such as Supreme Commander [wikipedia.org]) have this feature, so people are going to expect it.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Absolutely, after I played Supreme Commander I can't stand RTSs that don't allow zooming out.
    • Re:Game resolution (Score:4, Informative)

      by physicsnick ( 1031656 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:31PM (#19224961)
      The developer walkthrough is running at a 16x9 resolution, which I found to be quite strange since widescreen monitors are 16x10; I assume it was set up that way to match a widescreen projector rather than a monitor. The screenshots at IGN are all 4x3. This probably means the game is designed to run at any resolution and aspect ratio. In 3D games, though, the resolution is irrelevant to the size of objects on the screen. You're interested in the zoom level, and it doesn't look like that will be something you'll be able to modify.

      Scrolling around can be a pain, but zooming around would probably be much worse. The developers for Starcraft 2 cited the zoom camera in Supreme Commander as being one of the things that held it back from being a competitive game. Good Starcraft players don't generally find panning to be a hindrance because there are a large number of hotkeys that can help you navigate around the map.

      Holding ALT and pressing a number will center the view on that control group, as will double tapping the number. Holding CTRL and pressing F2 to F4 will save the current view to that function key, and pressing that function key will restore it to the saved view. Pressing space after any event will center the view on that event. Clicking the unit photo in the UI centers the view on the currently selected units. We'll likely see nearly identical hotkeys in Starcraft 2. At tournament levels, some players use the arrow keys to pan, because the half-second it takes to move the mouse to the edge of the screen leaves your units at the hands of the enemy for far too long ;-)
      • by ThePyro ( 645161 )

        The developers for Starcraft 2 cited the zoom camera in Supreme Commander as being one of the things that held it back from being a competitive game.

        I thought that comment was ridiculous for a couple reasons:

        1. How can an optional feature make the game uncompetitive? Nobody forces you to use the zoom. If zooming cramps your style then you're free to leave the zoom at a level you like. Instead, you can just scroll the window as usual. And keep scrolling. And scrolling... almost there...

        2. I play regula

        • Re:Game resolution (Score:4, Insightful)

          by physicsnick ( 1031656 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:29PM (#19225963)
          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.
      • by brkello ( 642429 )
        Watch the videos...they have at least some zooming capabilities that I saw. Though, they might have just been for show.
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by enc0der ( 907267 )
      Especially with my 30" cinema display. I don't need to see a 1 foot in size zerg coming at me, that just ain't right :)
  • FAQ on the Site! (Score:4, Informative)

    by soundguy900000 ( 813371 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:50PM (#19224321)
    Guys, right on the FAQ at www.starcraft2.com , they answer the question, of course there will be support for OSX. http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml [starcraft2.com] It is listed under their "Technical Aspects" area.
  • by Dr. Eggman ( 932300 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @12:58PM (#19224465)
    The Protoss Mothership will have not 'equivalent' in that the Terran and Zerg have no super unit that they can only have one of, but they will have counters. This is the kind of difference in races I want to see. A real difference in the build structure, the buildings, and the units means more variety of tactics and more fun. I can forgive the lack of a new race if they really do a good job differening the three normal races. Rather than having similar tech trees, I hope to see a complete dichotomy between the three. The recent Rise of Legends is a pretty good example of this, although there could still be more difference. In RoL, switching between races for the first time usually leaves you completly lost and confused, but once you get past the names and images, they still maintain a similar tech tree between the races, with only a handful of major differences in the building (granted those differences are deep rooted in the different stragies of each race, but there could have been more.)

    Starcraft already has a good bit of differentiation between the races, but there could be so much more. I could see each of the three races' buildings and tech trees taking on more characteristics of the races' themselves. Protoss should still be a strong, yet immoble build race, though the flexable teleportation and mobile pylons do serve to balance overall immobility. Terrans could be mobile, but more modular than before, with more CC addon slots and types and perhaps more addons for other buildings. Let the terrans be flexable with enough mobility as before but at the cost of the flexability the abandoned addons would provide. For instance the terrans could have access to different unit types and enhance units in different ways depending on what addons are activated. Perhaps the Reaper would be active with one addon to the barracks, but a different addon allows for medics. The Zerg have some awesome building tricks as it is; I don't know of anyother game (except WCIII) which you lose a harvester to build their buildings. But the Zerg could do more; perhaps encourage the player to expand the creep far and wide by giving an extra larva spawn at each creep colony to enhance the overwhelming force and plague-like gameplay nature of the zerg. The Zerg should be all about expanding, flexability and mobility; overwhelming forces and expanding across the whole of the map in infestation as they go.
    • by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:14PM (#19225695) Homepage Journal
      I am glad that the developers have mentioned that they wanted to get away from the click-fest model of gameplay and move more towards commanding groups. I love starcraft, but the micromanaging of individual units is the part that I hate the most. I would rather just have some kind of 'build order' that functions like a script. My units get busy creating the town, and then I create groups and assign missions. When things get hairy, I step in and micromanage. Meanwhile other objectives and missions take place on their own.

      I always thought that the races should be more differentiated by their building and scout types. As it stands in SC, Terrans and Protoss are basically cloned in terms of their buildings and workers. You have a base, and you have workers. You build another building for different types of warriors. Zerg are a little different as far as workers becoming buildings and larvae becoming warriors, but the building tech tree is basically the same.

      Zerg should be more swarming, with less individual AI and abilities. Just mass numbers. Protoss should be slow and powerful, with a few large, lumbering ships. The humans should be a patchwork of different unit types working together in mixed groups.

      I always looked at it like this. What would each race want to do, and how would it help their perceptions?

      What would Protoss want to do? Fill the screen with Pylons. It would be cool if Pylons had a synergistic effect, where two or more pylons covered a greater range than an individual pylon. The Protoss objective, then, would be to arrange pylons so that they would provide cross-coverage with all of your buildings. Protoss could see inside the energy field of any pylon on the screen. The greater the synergistic energy field, the greater the sight range.

      The Zerg would want to fill the screen with creep. Connected creep would provide map sight throughout the connection.

      Humans would be the most micromanaged, but the most flexible. They can build anywhere, they don't need pylons or creep. However, they would also have the most limited sight.
  • by frosty_tsm ( 933163 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:13PM (#19224731)
    I thought they meant experience points...
  • "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 bet
    • by EMeta ( 860558 )
      First, there's always a lot of luck in a game with this many variables. Do you explore the right direction first? Do you concentrate on units that slaughter or get slaughtered by what your opponents are building, etc. Likely this will play a large factor in individual games, and randomize what on a statisical scale is a bigger difference. Secondly, it's not hard for Battle.net to figure out what level of player you are and pare you against other players on a very similar level--perhaps even more so than
    • Re:internet play (Score:5, Interesting)

      by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:48PM (#19225265)
      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.

      Are you new to online play in general? If your significantly behind in the skill curve then you can either play similiarly skilled friends or play and lose a lot to gain more skill. It's true of all games. Blizzard RTS's tend to focus on "skill" over "strategy" but I think the gridation of skill is a lot smoother then you think.

      It's apparent you want skill to matter less. A person who masters a few keys skills will win over those without them. Preserving units with low health, the ability to focus fire and good special ability targetting are skills that you need. If your missing this control you will lose to someone with that control 100% of the time. Once you master those skills you would then move from Noob to Newb. A noob is one is is persistantly bad who does not improve with practice because they beligerantly cling to the way they think it should be player. A newb is simply someone who need practice. If you think the system is insurmountable then you are a noob.

      The amount of skill needed is fairly low but if you can't grasp the basics nothing can help you. Now once you grasp these basics then it's all strategy. For instance I have a perfect record against my cousin. I'm 73 : 0 against him in war 3. The difference isn't micro. I have decent micro skills but nothing special. He has awe inspiring micro. He clicks and manage so many groups at a time that I cannot win battle with even numbers of troops. If we are even I would lose and frequently lose skrimishes during a game. However I have much better big picture strategey and despite losing a few battle I win the war through better resource management, expansion/expansion denial, ability mix, and recon.
    • Did you not read the initial announcement? They are implementing a new matchmaking system. I'm sure it will be easy for players to find other people with equal abilities and have fun.
  • by mattgreen ( 701203 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @01:34PM (#19225011)
    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: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Rolgar ( 556636 )
      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 h

      • You're asking for a different game. Alot of the stuff you ask for is in Company of Heroes in some shape or form. While I like Company of Heroes, I want Starcraft 2 to stick to what made Starcraft fun: simple, fun gameplay. When you start adding the realism of one random one shot kills but with random missing, you will see alot quick, boring fights, and special abilities become worthless. Not to mention luck will become a huge factor, and Starcraft already had enough luck involved in the equation.

        Blizz
  • by nuzak ( 959558 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @02:00PM (#19225489) Journal
    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.
    • Terrain (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AlpineR ( 32307 )
      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 S
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        The narrator did not hint that it would impede movement. He just talked about how it was one of the new elements that was added. After the debris slid down the ramp it disappeared...it doesn't look like the debris is persistent.

        After the nuclear strike, there are indeed craters. But just like the debris they disappear after a few seconds and did not appear to effect where the units were able to walk. Indeed, it would be stupid if it had that functionality because people could nuke chokepoints. Unlike
    • Still no appreciable terrain, just two non-deformable levels flat as a griddle.

      Watch the artwork video. There is some in-game footage of a planet that is much more varied. The gameplay video is on a space platform, which makes sense as a blocky environment.
  • Not to complain... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fallen1 ( 230220 ) on Tuesday May 22, 2007 @03:33PM (#19227007) Homepage
    but I am. Sort of. If the game can work on Windows XP then I see no technical reasons why it cannot run on Windows 2000 Pro. There are MANY people still using that system since it is stable, does everything we need it to do, and we don't have to un-prettify it to get basic functionality and ease of control back. Admittedly, all it takes to get most of the basics back on XP is a few clicks of the mouse but why should I have to?

    I know the trend is toward dumbing down technology so it isn't as "scary" to the average user but how about everyone trend upward instead? How about we INCREASE the intelligence of the average user by giving him/her a good system and encouraging them to LEARN? Wow, what a concept? A highly educated populace that isn't afraid of technology! Everybody gets smarter!!

    Guess that would mean the techno-elite like Bill would lose their place in the world and innovation might have to happen... hmmmm, guess that highly educated populace might not come to fruition after all. Bah, it feels like Monday all over again and I needed a rant :-p
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      I've been waiting for an excuse to move to a Mac. I will not upgrae to XP at home, and quite frankly, nearly every game I want to playu anymore is on both systems. So starcraft II won't work under 2000, then no more windows.

      hmmm. Blizzard saves the day again.
      • What makes you think SC2 won't work on Win2k? Just because they don't list it as officially supported (during a press conference!) doesn't mean it won't work. Although you probably just needed a real or made up excuse why to switch to mac, in which case I'm sorry for ruining your RDF experience.

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