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Blizzard Announces StarCraft 2
We'll be returning once again to the world of StarCraft, it appears, and not in the form of a Massively Multiplayer game. Blizzard has announced StarCraft 2 at their packed event in Seoul, South Korea. IGN is liveblogging the event, describing gameplay footage being played as well as full cinematics. From the description of ongoing events there are massive changes to the way the game plays, new units, a physics system within the game engine, and the capability to show over 100 units onscreen at a time. "Showing gameplay footage - Looks like protoss ships - floating over asteroid/ base structure - entering protoss ase - similar looking buildings - vespene gas still in the game - character pane shows up on right side - some protoss guy - shifts to terran bases floating on rockets over same type of territory - sill collecting crystals as resources - marines load out. Dustin is actually playing the game - nothing in the game is final." Additional coverage from Milky at 1up.
But Blizzard did in fact beat out Duke Nukem Forever. Now taking bets on Diablo 3.
Seriously, I'm very conflicted about this. Part of me realizes that the original developers are long gone and creating subscription games of a different franchise and genre. The other part of me knows this must have been in the works for a very, very long time, and probably went through many fine-tuning incarnations, and is really looking forward to seeings this released.
On the bright side, either way I'll have a chance this time around to learn to play well before the first wave of popularity dies off.
Evidently, the key to understanding recursion is to begin by understanding recursion. The rest is easy.
The Protoss mother ship (from IGN's Charles Onyett):
3:18 - warprey also very effective against structures - very vulnerable to small unit fire - shws warpreys getting wiped out by terran marines. Physics system lets debris from warpreys roll down a ramp. Showing one more unit - warped in in a serious of cubes - giant floating base - called a protoss mothership - can only have 1 at a time - cost big resources - special abilities include timebomb that slows all enemy missiles inside - shows terran missle launcher shooting in projectiles that stop in the field before they reach the ship - when field ends missiles drop the ground - planet cracker attack - giant lasers stream from ship to ground - ship can be moved around while planet cracker laser is active - the ship looks like a metallic, triangular sand dollar - mothership can create a black hole anywhere it wannts to - creates distortion that actually sucks ships in and destroys them - in the demo the black hole destroyed four terran battle cruisers in about ten seconds.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
Honestly, Blizzard could learn a lot from Relic (the developer of the games you mention). Relic somewhat quietly revolutionized the RTS seven years ago with Homeworld, only to watch the market quickly return to Warcraft mechanics, with Blizzard capping the return in 2002.
If Starcraft 2's going to be a Warcraft 3 with pylons, so be it; it'll probably sell millions in South Korea, and I don't doubt it will be a fine update of the balancing act that was Starcraft. Without something really new in the way battles are fought, though, I just can't imagine myself being that excited.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
I imagine by now my post might not be read, but here goes.
I have been a fan of Blizzard for years, still am really. I put faith in the quality of their product, but I am concerned with a concept they themselves essentially created.
Custom User Interfaces. With the advent of World of Warcraft, I wonder why it had not been developed before. For those who are not quite following me yet, let me indulge you.
World of Warcraft features an almost 100% customizable User Interface via the use of XML and LUA. The only real restrictions are ones which could possibly cause you to gain an unfair advantage over your opponents. Granted, the "convenience" itself can add an advantage, but Blizzard is more concerned of causing things that were not originally intended to occur, that drastically imbalances the playing field. After using their customizable UI for years, I find myself dependant on such customization.
My concern is, will they impliment a method for customizing their UI to the degree that World of Warcraft saw? I for one would be in favour of such a design. Consider that there are little shortcuts, and little nicities that Warcraft 3 had over Starcraft 1. Things such as pressing tilde to select any idle worker, or pressing the "forward" and "back" buttons on new-er mice to cycle through different types of units. I would be eager to see how much of an impact customizing the UI in a RTS of such calibre would have.
The games changes cause the top of the compaies does not gamers anymore , so what they understant from improvements is the changes and this effects the playability of the Games. I hope so time shows me that I am wrong.
This one is complete: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvuJAiQXoTc
The reason though why they have been dropped is largely because it actually took a lot more time creating sprites than 3D models.
c reens looks very nice, but hasn't yet been released.
You needed to build a 3D model, animate it, render it out for every angle, then compile the sprite. A real pain in the arse.
I too though, personally, would like to see a few more sprite based RTS games. Purely for the amount of units you could have on screen at once without worrying about lag, esp on lesser PC's.
I recently discovered a game called SunAge, it's an old school sprite based RTS, but using newer rendering technologies.
The official site is here: http://www.vertex4.com/sunage/index.php?section=s
On the other hand, heroes might not fit into StarCraft's world as well as they fit into WarCraft's. We'll see.
What makes StarCraft I fun has not very much to do with graphics. It's the gameplay rules and balance.
I'm actually concerned that fancy graphics might (a) distract the game designers from concentrating on game rules and balance and/or (b) clutter the screen so that it's hard to quickly asses what's going on when you look at a new region of the map.
Actually the heroes were the whole point of the improvement. With it came whole new strategic elements. In a Starcraft match the only thing matters is who can control the most units and hit the most keys per minute (second). In WC3 strategy matters much more. After all it is called a strategy game.
Two words: Bull Shit. And then some more: Dual perspective. Make the large units' size scale-accurate and the ability to switch between Macro and Ground Unit scales. Remember the Ghost that never was? Add levels to be played at FPS level. Add Bridge level scale where instead of managing hordes of troops you manage the crew of one Cruise or other big ship to accomplish a particular objective (think Star Wars, "shoot in the exhaust, blow enemy base"). They could add the option to have generals or hero units and pre-program them at the beginning of the level/match with basic strategies so if you don't take any action they would start organizing whatever units you assign to them to follow one of those strategies. So no, you are wrong, there are tons of things that can be added to make it incredible while keeping what made the original cool.
+Raider of the lost BBS
Yep. I've finally switched to Linux full time now. I'm not gonna bother with Windows (or 2nd rate quality with Cedega/Wine for that matter) just for this one game and I imagine there are alot more people in the same position. Either they put out a Linux version or lose customers.
Although I have nothing to do with the torrent myself, I should note for the benefit of those who are finding starcraft2.com to be sluggishly slashdotted, all the "good stuff" from the site is available via BitTorrent.
Enjoy.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Yeah - I'm with you on that. The 0.8% of the market that wants their operating system for free are all going to rush out the stores to buy their $59 retail editions of the game instead of downloading the torrent 3 weeks before the game is even released.
I totally agree - Blizzard should produce a Linux version of this game, but the market just doesn't justify the expense. It's unfortunate, but true. If Propellerhead Reason, Visual Studio 2005, Half-Life 2 and Starcraft 2 all had official Linux releases, I would never touch a window's machine again. If Linux eventually manages to take a significant chunk of marketshare, like Firefox has managed to do, we'll see official Linux releases, but I can't see too many businesses putting in the effort before that happens.
Formation, terrain, supply, and morale are all strategy game possibilities that make for more interesting games (to me) than micromanagement. I like my RTS games cerebral. If I wanted micromanagement, I'd play Diablo.
Taking micromanagement out of the player's hands - and putting it in the computer's hands like it belongs - adds a dimension to the game instead of taking one away. Formation tactics, with direct combat units protecting artillery, etc., can really come to the fore. In Warcraft/Starcraft games, any attempt at formation falls apart immediately upon engagement. Due to the lack of formation tactics, vital military concepts such as "flank" and "rear" have significantly reduced importance in Starcraft. All that is left to emulate combined arms is unit mix.
The fact that your units are your perfect slaves, there for you to micromanage at will, takes away another big chunk of complexity from the game. Your units (and your enemy's units!) should balk at being sent to fight against an impossible foe. They should run away when their formations are shattered. The necessity to regroup, the importance of always leaving your enemies a path to retreat, breaking up enemy lines through artillery, all of these start to take on serious importance when morale matters.
Lines of supply nearly work in Starcraft. They just aren't emphasized. When battles last long enough, the importance of reinforcements arriving from base begin to dominate. With better gameplay engine support for actual lines of supply, this could make for far more interesting games.
I have to think the game marketshare of Linux is running neck and neck with Apple systems. Blizzard is showing that it is worth it to port to MacOS, so why don't they also feel the same about Linux?
The Linux game market is *not* all those willing to buy a native Linux port of a game, it is *only* those who refuse to buy a Win32 version and dual boot or emulate. If a company does a native Linux port it needs *new* sales to justify it. Cannibalizing existing sales, having a person buy a Linux version instead of a Win32 version, does not bring in any new money. It loses money, they got the same sale but they spent more money getting it. The majority of Linux gamers dual boot or emulate, until that changes the Linux gaming market will not be viable - Linux gamers are already paying customers via the Win32 version.
Historically the Mac side was a very different story. Dual boot was not an option until recent times, and emulation was not practical for games - the CPU, not just the APIs, needed to be emulated. So Mac gamers had to have a native port. This made the Mac gaming market viable. If anything has changed, it is not Linux becoming more viable, it is Mac becoming less viable. If Mac gamers begin to dual boot or emulate, so that they more gaming options, then they will create an environment where developers will find it more profitable to reach Mac gamers via the Win32 version as well. One version (Win32) to rule them all (Win32, Linux, and Mac).
A secondary but non-trivial problem with targeting Linux, support. Targeting Linux is not like Mac where you have one platform, or two if you still want to target PowerPC. There are many Linux distribution, your code and/or installer may need to be aware of some of their subtleties, your support personnel surely will need to be aware. These support people may even need to be more technically inclined than Mac support people, on second thought that's a given isn't it? Your quality assurance testing matrix just ballooned from Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, MacOS X Intel, MacOS X PowerPC to the former plus Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE. Doesn't seem to bad at first glance, but keep in mind the much smaller return that the latter four provide. All this support and qa effort *must* be paid for by the Linux gamer subsegment that refuses to buy the Win32 version and dual boot or emulate.
The Linux gaming market is not really viable yet, at least for large developers. I wish this were not true, but it is. Recent events like the Apple Intel migration have not really changed the situation. I'll address some good questions that came from a troll thread.
Supporting Mac OSX on X86 and not supporting Linux is nothing short of Laziness now.
You are mistaken. The migration from PowerPC to Intel has not made a Linux port one bit easier. It has made the Mac market more important as a greater percentage of Macs are now viable gaming systems, especially on the laptop side.
Mac games are not *nix based, they still use proprietary APIs like Carbon and Cocoa to some degree. Also a company like Blizzard that has been supporting Macs for over a decade surely has some internal libraries that are pretty Windows and Mac specific as well. The source code to Mac based games is not really any more compatible with Linux than it was before Apple's Intel migration. All that has happened is that assembly language / SSE from the Windows side does not have to be rewritten in PowerPC / Altivec.
I have to think the game marketshare of Linux is running neck and neck with Apple systems. Blizzard is showing that it is worth it to port to MacOS, so why don't they also feel the same about Linux?
The Linux game market is *not* all those willing to buy a native Linux port of a game, it is *only* those who refuse to buy a Win32 version and dual boot or emulate. If a company does a native Linux port it needs *new* sales to justify it. Cannibalizing existing sales, having a person buy a Linux version instead of a Win32 version, does not bring in any new money. It loses money, they got the same sale but they spent more money getting it. The majority of Linux gamers dual boot or emulate, until that changes the Linux gaming market will not be viable - Linux gamers are already paying customers via the Win32 version.
Historically the Mac side was a very different story. Dual boot was not an option until recent times, and emulation was not practical for games - the CPU, not just the APIs, needed to be emulated. So Mac gamers had to have a native port. This made the Mac gaming market viable. If anything has changed, it is not Linux becoming more viable, it is Mac becoming less viable. If Mac gamers begin to dual boot or emulate, so that they more gaming options, then they will create an environment where developers will find it more profitable to reach Mac gamers via the Win32 version as well. One version (Win32) to rule them all (Win32, Linux, and Mac).
A secondary but non-trivial problem with targeting Linux, support. Targeting Linux is not like Mac where you have one platform, or two if you still want to target PowerPC. There are many Linux distribution, your code and/or installer may need to be aware of some of their subtleties, your support personnel surely will need to be aware. These support people may even need to be more technically inclined than Mac support people, on second thought that's a given isn't it? Your quality assurance testing matrix just ballooned from Win2K, WinXP, WinVista, MacOS X Intel, MacOS X PowerPC to the former plus Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE. Doesn't seem to bad at first glance, but keep in mind the much smaller return that the latter four provide. All this support and qa effort *must* be paid for by the Linux gamer subsegment that refuses to buy the Win32 version and dual boot or emulate.
It irks me when people see a successful game and say, "Wouldn't it be better if it were totally different?"
Look at Master of Orion...Master of Orion II was a great game and Master of Orion III was a complete dog. An upgrade of AI, graphics, buildings and ship gear on MOO2 would have left them with a solid, potentially excellent game. Instead they tossed everything from MOO2 except the name, and proceeded to create one of the great flops of all time.
Judging by the Diablo->DiabloII sequel, I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Yeah, but if you want cable just for one specific channel (say, sci-fi), you have to get Basic and Extended or whatever - you wind up paying extra for a bunch of channels you'll never use.
And the $20/mo online game doesn't spam three minutes of ads at me every five minutes.
I'll put my money where my mouth is. If there were an escrow that linux gamers could shell out the estimated game cost, preproduction, into, only payable to Blizzard upon delivery of a fully operational Linux version of SC2, I'd gladly put $50-$60 in. If enough money were generated, it'd be proof that Linux is a viable market for games. If not, then so be it. I may even stop being a lazy ass and see if Blizzard would be amicable to an arrangement like that.
Personally, I just went through installing WinXP to play some older games and I never want to do that again. I'm at home in Linux now, so I'd rather go without than install Windows, but I'd rather be able to play the game than not also.
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
How about the excuse of "I have a life and don't want to dedicate it to a video game"? I can stop playing Final Fantasy XII, or StarCraft2, and leave it sitting for a month without losing any money, and then pick it right back up. MMO's require massive time dedication. I have better things to do with my time, thank you very little. I'm looking forward to a new RTS I can play on a LAN with my friends, rather than having a revolving cycle of questing, leveling, questing, ad infinitum.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
The first thing I thought when I saw the screenshots of Starcraft II was: "The units look just like they did on the box for the original Starcraft."
I remember after playing Starcraft for a while looking at the box and thinking: "That's not how the game actually looks! Those units all have extra spiky parts and the buildings have more attachments and who the hell sends a command center into battle?!" I figured that the shots were from many months before release and they simplified the graphics and abilities as they polished the game.
Well, Starcraft 2 doesn't look exactly like those old screenshots. It's more like a beautiful, glowing, high definition revisit to the original concepts. I wonder how much Starcraft 2 is based on their original vision for Starcraft but with ten times as much computer power and a hundred times as much cash available.
Actually, that sounds like the Star Wars prequels -- an old idea returned to with new technology. Except I have some faith that Blizzard can remake an old idea without adding annoying characters, terrible acting, and boring storylines. Then again, they might add a fourth race....
AlpineR
If there were an escrow that linux gamers could shell out the estimated game cost, preproduction, into, only payable to Blizzard upon delivery of a fully operational Linux version of SC2, I'd gladly put $50-$60 in. If enough money were generated, it'd be proof that Linux is a viable market for games.
1 91075.
No, it would not be. Linux gamers who would buy a Win32 version and dual boot or emulate do not count, only Linux gamers who choose to go without the game unless there is a native Linux port count. To be viable you need *new* sales, not merely move sales from the Win32 column to the Linux column. See http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=235329&cid=19
Look at Master of Orion...Master of Orion II was a great game and Master of Orion III was a complete dog. An upgrade of AI, graphics, buildings and ship gear on MOO2 would have left them with a solid, potentially excellent game. Instead they tossed everything from MOO2 except the name, and proceeded to create one of the great flops of all time.
The trick is to improve the game by addressing its weakest points without changing its strongest. In MOO II, the least fun things about the game, IMO, were: starts were too slow (not enough to do at the beginning), micromanagement got tedious by mid-game when you had a fair number of colonies, and the game reached the tipping point too soon (the point where you knew whether you were going to ultimately win or lose came well before the end of the game, making the last few hours of play anticlimactic). If they had addressed those things (for example: by increasing the management decisions for the home world, simplifying colony management, making it easier to catch up in technology, and nerfing the most powerful weapons and defenses) and combined that with better AI and some nice shiny new graphics, it would have been great.
In Starcraft, I found the greatest weaknesses of the game to be: the difficulty in meaningfully managing hordes of troops and of coordinating a multi-pronged attack or simultaneously attacking an enemy while defending your own base and managing resource gathering, and the enemy AI in the non-campaign game which essentially made one on one fights a cakewalk but two on one fights extremely difficult, with very little in between on the difficulty scale. If those two things could be addressed, Starcraft 2 would be a great successor to the original.
Sid Meier has done a (mostly) good job in successively refining Civilization, adding new interesting features and getting rid of the stuff that didn't work so well last time, without altering the basic formula of the game.
There's no such thing as Scotchtoberfest!
why would they need a physics system? People are complaining that you had to micromanage the heros on WC3, what can realistic physics add, other than more little useless details (oh no! the Goliath tripped over a rock on the ground, I better go help him!)
I'm not a fanatic who thinks physics are just a gimmick to replace good gameplay (I loved hl2), but it should be interesting to see what they're doing with this. Otherwise it sounds like they're caving to "peer pressure" (all the cool game engines are doing it!)
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
I liked Starcraft and will probably like Starcraft 2 like a lot of other people...but the hype surrounding it, dancing girls, thousands of people stuffed into a stadium to see it..seems more than a bit over the top and bizzare.
It's a game, not the answer to forgoing a life.
http://www.petitiononline.com/ibpfl/petition.html
Sign the petition, atleast we're trying. >.
You can't take the sky from me.