Starcraft Junkie

As Blizzcon looms near, Blizzard’s key employees and community managers have been dishing out quite a bit of interviews and have re-iterated through almost every key aspect of StarCraft 2. Karune, Frank Pearce and others have commented on key issues such as MBS, the new Gas Mechanics, Single player and Account unification issues. However, the build used as the basis for all this coverage is none other than the WWI two-month old version of StarCraft 2.

Out of two dozen Interviews, we have picked the bits of info that shed additional light on what is already known about Blizzard’s RTS flagship.

Gameindustry Interview highlights :

So like Warcraft III, the replay functionality wasn’t something we contemplated from day one, it was an afterthought and wasn’t implemented as well as it could have been – so that’s something that we can do from day one for StarCraft II, which should be pretty cool.

 

We want to take the storytelling component in the single-player campaign to the next level, so we’re talking about branching missions, decisions on the gamer’s part in terms of the technology that’s available to them – there’s a lot of buzz on the Internet around social communities, and we’ve got those social communities around our games and we want to leverage that to bring those players closer together on Battle.net.

Blizzard is definitely aiming high with its next-generation unified gaming platform. Blizzard’s new account system, the online store and the Global Achievement system. Coupled with Frank’s “social” vision , these ingredients form a recipe for a unique and unprecedented gaming platform, bringing together gamers from very different genres under one massive roof. It should be noted however, that the social gaming niche is already being explored by services such as Raptr.

Q: Do you see lots of crossover between the different players of your games?

 

Frank Pearce: We did some research, and I can’t remember which direction we did it in – whether it was StarCraft players that played WoW or vice versa – and there’s a fair amount of overlap.

In a brief reply to  VG247, Pearce also confirmed one of the most obvious estimations one could make – StarCraft 2 is not planned to be released in 2008.

“This year? Like, 2008? Too much work to do,” Pearce told VG247.

He added: “We don’t have a specific release date in mind yet. We still have too much work to do.”

StarCraftWire, Incgamer Network’s new StarCraft site, manages to score quite an informative Q&A with Karune during the PAX expo

StarCraftWire.net: Will the Medivac Dropships be able to heal each other?

 
Karune: No, the Medivac Dropships will not be able to, however, SCVs can still be brought to them in order to repair them

 

StarCraftWire.net: Will it be possible to play Starcraft II at LAN Parties?

 
Karune: While the idea is still there, the main focus right now is Battle.net and Multiplayer to determine whether or not LAN will be available.

Unlike StarCraft: BW’s medics, Medivacs won’t be able to keep themselves in full health throughout the battles, and will require maintenance to be kept operational. We will be seeing more SCVs coming with every Terran infantry drop in order to keep these vital support units alive.
Considering the wave of coverage about Blizzards grand account unification plans, we can expect Blizzard to pay significantly more attention to the way players interact with their centralized systems, and implement only the minimal, if any, features for closed multiplayer environments.

StarCraftWire.net: When can we expect to see more updates to the Starcraft II official website, and what can we expect to see?

 
Karune: Not really sure when there will be an update to the site, although there may be misc. updates now and then for units, but otherwise waiting for closer to the Beta to really update the website.

 

StarCraftWire.net: Has there been a decision on what units will make it into the final game?

 
Karune: No real decision has been made really, we’re still trying to decide what units will make the cut, as you’ve seen that we dropped a couple units, one of our goals may be to try to keep the unit number closer to to that of the original Starcraft as we don’t want to have a unit be in the game and have it be useless to the battle.

 

 

StarCraftWire.net: What is Blizzard currently focusing on in Starcraft II?

 

 
Karune: Single player. Single player is still our primary focus right now, as it’s our main concern, afterwards, our focus will be on the multiplayer aspect which shouldn’t be too difficult, with the Editor being our final focus for Starcraft II.

Blizzard Developers’  StarCraft 2 single player efforts have long been mentioned, but it was the technical aspect that has really shown how much development and thought is invested in this somewhat overlooked aspect of StarCraft 2. SC2’s single player campaign was worth developing a separate and innovative 3D engine for, and the hype just keeps coming.

And interesting glimpse into the long term StarCraft Universe strategy is provided in this TotalVideoGames interview

VG: You talk about expanding the lore this time around in a similar manner as Warcraft II to Warcraft III; the next step after Warcraft III was World of Warcraft, so I have to ask – is this laying down the foundations for the often rumoured ‘Universe of StarCraft’?

 

 

Pearce: Anything we do to evolve the storyline in a franchise lays the foundation for whatever we want to do in the future. One of our goals with these franchises is to create rich, deep worlds that we can use to leverage for all sorts of things, whether it’s novels, comic books, games of different genres, or even movies. We’re also in the process of trying to have a Warcraft movie made.

 

Colayco: In recent months we’ve had a StarCraft board game introduced, and manga comics. So having a greatly fleshed out lore and background to a story lends itself to all these different projects.

These are not fantasy plans, either. The WarCraft movie is due to be released some time during 2009, and is produced by none other than the makers of 300 and The Dark Knight – Legendary Studios. Serious business, so to speak. Leveraging a rich and immersive Universe to build a multi-million fan base that follows it across multiple genres and platforms is perhaps the best and most challenging long-term strategy a VP of Product Development can embrace. 

We have read through many StarCraft interviews, articles and videos in order to extract the maximum updates from the recent news wave, which to remind you, is still based on the WWI build.

Brace for Blizzcon.

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Blizzard’s co-founder, Frank Pearce, has come out with a statement sure to excite StarCraft fans in an interview given to VideoGaming247.

When asked about the possibility of a 4th race in StarCraft 2, Frank deals the usual response:

We talked about the possibility of a fourth race early on, but we felt like we had a finite amount of great ideas and wanted to make sure we focused all the cool, best ideas on the existing three races rather than diluting those ideas across four races.

However, for the first time, Frank gives hope when it comes to the inevitable StarCraft 2 expansion:

We don’t have the resources or time to add a fourth race to the launch of StarCraft II, but I’m sure in the event that we decide to do an expansion set it’s a feature that’ll come up for discussion.

This is the first time a Blizzard representative has not completely denied the possibility of adding a new playable race to StarCraft 2. Blizzard have been very adamant in their choice of sticking with the three original StarCraft races, which they decided to further explore and differentiate between. It will be interesting to see how they tackle the challenge of introducing a completely new race to the delicate balance currently evolving amongst the three existing races in StarCraft 2.

Next up, we have a few bits of information about StarCraft 2’s most recent gameplay tactics, straight from the mouth of Blizzard – Karune, Blizzard’s community manager. First up, Karune discusses a sneaky tactic employed by the Terran.

Thought I’d share with you guys that in internal gameplay, we’ve had some poor souls find out the hard way that apparently if you are playing Terran and you immediately lift off your command center to a close by high yield mineral field, you will easily make up the difference of the time lost from collecting minerals during that period, and essentially be able to out produce any other race very quickly. Thus far, it seems like it is easy to defend this new fast expansion strategy. Nonetheless, I’m sure it will be balanced in the coming weeks, but thought it was funny so I thought I’d share.

The yellow, high yield minerals currently provide 50% more resources than the normal, blue variants. Since the Terran Command Center, like all Terran buildings, has a natural ability to lift off, maps with a closeby yellow mineral patch make this almost a crime not to abuse.

Karune has received a few suggestions to “fix” this issue on the forums and responded to them:

Making lift off a researched ability and hard coating the minerals both seem like interesting ideas – I’ll be sure to forward that along to the devs. Like I said before though, this has only worked on ‘certain’ maps. If anything, those maps could be modified slightly and it would probably fix it.

Knowing Blizzard, this strategy will likely still be viable on certain maps, but in a balanced way that allows the other races to respond to it without being at an obvious disadvantage.

Karune’s next post discusses the Mutalisks’ ability to bunch up tightly and function like a single unit, attacking targets for very high damage, as well as utilizing their attack cool-down time to move. This tactic requires some micromanaging skill to accomplish, and has become a favorite discussion point in Q&As. This is what the situation is like, currently:

There has not been extensive testing of this yet, but in terms of Mutalisks, players will be able to stack, but it will be much harder to keep them clumped up. As more info surfaces about this, I will keep you informed.

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Also, Mutalisks at first in StarCraft II while slowed down a bit before they attacked, but the code has been fixed to allow it to attack on the move like the original StarCraft.

It seems like Mutalisks will still be able to attack and move if used by skilled, agile players, but creating a Korean Mutalisk super-unit will be significantly more difficult.

Moving on the the Protoss side, Karune talks about the Immortal’s effectiveness against the difference races.

In my opinion, Immortals are better against Terran but definitely still useful in PvZ matchups, especially against armored units that are harder to kill, such as Ultralisks and Roaches. Furthermore, Immortals are almost always the unit to be sent in first while laying siege to an enemy base, eating up all the initial base defense pounding.

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The most effective counters to the Immortals are units that have fast attacks up to 10 damage per attack.

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Actually, recently I played a game realizing that Psi Storms are actually quite effective against them as well, as they fit that counter perfectly, doing a set X damage every second while the unit was under in the area of effect.

With their Hardened Shields, the Immortals cannot absorb more than 10 points of damage per hit, making them somewhat less effective against the Zerg and their impressive arsenal of small, fast attacking units which don’t deal a lot of damage. It’s interesting to note that the Protoss High Templar’s Psi Storm is actually a good counter to Immortals, since the damage it deals, despite being quite high, comes in small portions.

Another post from Karune deals with the scrapped Protoss structure – the Dark Pylon.

The Dark Pylon is not in the multiplayer version of the game. Originally, when it was being tested, it would cloak buildings in a radius around the building, making it more difficult for enemies to scout out ‘tech’ buildings in a Protoss base, to determine how they were teching. Additionally, it also hid base defenses until they began firing.

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The Dark Pylon was taken out because it was not found as useful as what was intended. There are discussions of finding a possible replacement building that would also serve as a base defense, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Dark Pylon’s role was “borrowed” from the Command & Conquer universe – its intended functionality greatly resembles the various base stealth devices found there.

Lastly, Blizzard has opened an online store, where they sell Blizzard universe related “memorabilia” in the form of wallpapers and mobile ringtones. All your favorite characters, scenes, and battlecries are available for purchase and download. Unfortunately, at this time, only wallpapers are available for the StarCraft universe. If you’re looking for a free StarCraft wallpaper, check out the one we featured on the SC2 Blog.

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ATI – AMD’s “Advances in Real‐Time Rendering in 3D Graphics and Games Course“, during the highly technical SIGGRAPH 2008 conference, included a whole chapter dedicated solely to the implementation of the shader framework and the rendering techniques used in StarCraft 2.
As the name implies, the paper, which won’t be an easy read even for seasoned programmers, is a part of a course with the following prerequisites:

Prerequisites
This course assumes working knowledge of a modern real‐time graphics API like OpenGL or Direct3D, as well as a solid basis in commonly used graphics algorithms. The participants are also assumed to be familiar with the concepts of programmable shading and shading languages.

The StarCraft 2 engine definitely has a split personality, and for a good reason – there is a fully interactive, playable “Story Mode”, which requires a completely different form of real-time rendering. Rendering four high-resolution characters and a detailed static environment is quite unlike rendering two hundred units with hundreds of constantly changing lighting sources, but both of the above scenarios must be supported by the same engine.

Starcraft II is supported by an engine that in many ways has a split personality; during normal game play we typically render scenes from a relatively far away distance, with high batch counts, and a focus on action rather than details. At the same time, we really wanted to push our storytelling forward with Starcraft II, and this is where the game’s
“Story Mode” comes in. In this mode, the player generally sits back to take in the game’s rich story, lore and visuals, interacting with other characters through dialogues and watching actions unfold….

…story mode generally boasts lower batch counts, close‐up shots, and a somewhat more contemplative feel – all things more typical of a first person shooter.

All technical details aside, Chapter 5 includes one over-quoted statement which presumably reveales the GPU system requirements for StarCraft 2.

Yet we also wanted to utilize the full potential of any available hardware to ensure the game’s looks were competitive. This meant supporting a widerange of hardware, from ATI Radeon 9800/NVIDIA GeForce FX’s to the ATI Radeon HD 4800s and NVIDIA GeForce G200s, targeting maximum utilization on each different GPU platform.

The above statement effectively puts the minimum requirement bar at an ATI Radeon 9800 or at Nvidia’s GeForce 5 family – cards which have been introduced more than 5 years ago. Blizzard’s developers are staying loyal to their tradition of aiming for the mainstream and putting an emphasis on gameplay instead of intense system punishment.

Reports from the Game Convention in Leipzig are streaming in, but considering that the presented build is actually identical to the World Wide Invitational one, nothing major is expected to be either announced or discovered during the event.
IGN’s brief interview with Frank Pearce, Blizzard’s senior vice president of product development, hasn’t revealed much, but it did confirm that there is no super-secret  StarCraft 2 closed beta testing group, and that the beta is months away at best.

Currently, the testing for StarCraft II doesn’t include that many people. “It’s like a limited internal alpha phase,” says Pearce. “The development team that’s working on it is playing it and we’ve released some alpha builds to some other development teams internally and then the quality assurance department is also playing it.”

…We asked when the field of testers might expand to beyond Blizzard’s walls. “That’s months away,” said Pearce. “We still have to expand our internal alpha to include the rest of the organization, iterate on that feedback, and then we have to evaluate what kind of beta we need, whether we need one at all. There’s a pretty high level of certainty that we’re going to need a beta and then we have to decide if we want to do a host beta or a closed beta or both. So, months.”

Another interview was given to VideoGamer, with Frank’s line remaining consistent – things are going well, but the game is far from being being ready to be released.

VideoGamer.com: Which leads me nicely on to the next question which is when will they get the chance to play the game? Do you have even a rough ballpark for when the game’s gong to be released?

FP: Not really. We still have a lot of work to do. Anyone that’s had the opportunity to play it at any of the shows we’ve shown it at might think wow, this feels pretty good, this feels pretty complete, so why don’t they just release it? But we still have a lot of work to do on the Battle.net side and we still have a lot of work to do on the single-player campaign side. And until that stuff is done, the total package isn’t there.

The second part of the interview, however, is interesting, and sheds quite a lot of light on the development and decision making processes inside Blizzard. When the interview touches WoW and the possibility of a StarCraft MMO, Frank puts things in perspective by reminding that World of WarCraft has been in development since 1999, and says that bringing the StarCraft Universe to the same level won’t be easy.

VideoGamer.com You’ve made it difficult for yourself!

FP: Yeah, we’ve made it very difficult for ourselves and it’s an overwhelming thought! I’ve been there at Blizzard since we started on WoW and it’s been a very long and arduous journey. And to think about taking that journey again with the StarCraft franchise is a little scary! It makes an RTS like Starcraft 2 seem very achievable [laughs].

VideoGamer.com: Fans say a StarCraft MMO would be great, but they don’t see your side of things do they?

FP: The World of Warcraft team is 135 people. The StarCraft 2 team is 40 people.

During the interview, Frank also confirms that unlike StarCraft (which was ported to Nintendo 64), StarCraft 2 is not planned to be ported to any sort of console, mainly due to the game’s fast pace.

FP: It’s not something we’re specifically planning for right now. The development team is working on the game and the interface with the PC and the PC interface peripherals in mind.

BC: One barrier to entry there is just the speed of the game. If you look at how the RTS genre has evolved a lot of it has slowed things down, make things a little bit more, not a plodding place, but a little bit more of giving players more of a chance to evaluate. StarCraft is really action packed.

All in all, It looks like once again, StarCraft 2 fans are going to have to wait for BlizzCon for real news and information about the game.

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Blizzard will be introducing a massive cross-game Achievement System, which will be featured in all three announced Blizzard project. If things go well, the system is also likely to be applied retroactively to existing Blizzard titles.

World of WarCraft’s lead designer, Jeff Kaplan, has told MTV Multiplayer that the Wrath of the Lich King’s Achievement System is just the first step…

…he revealed that eventually players will have a Blizzard Account that shows Achievements from other Blizzard games they’ve played, including the upcoming titles “Diablo III” and “StarCraft II.”

 

“Eventually, our plans are for the Achievement system to become an account-based system,” he explained.

The Achievement System will undoubtedly introduce a long term, life-time spanning reward system for loyal Blizzard fans. It might even include retroactive achievements which won’t be available to newcomers, as promised by Blizzard on the Wrath of the Lich King achievements web page:

Feats of Strength will be awarded retroactively (that is, they’ll be immediately granted to your character if you qualify) since many of them will be impossible to earn in Wrath of the Lich King.

Blizzard intends to unify all the player’s achievements under a single Blizzard account which will contain a permanent record of achievements. Having to make an educated guess, based on the interview and the somewhat similar systems implemented on other platforms, Blizzard will probably keep record of your highest WarCraft 3 ranks, Diablo 2 levels and official StarCraft tournaments, as well as other multiplayer and single player in-game achievements.

You’ll have this Blizzard identity, and you’ll be able to see things like ‘Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played Starcraft and he was mediocre in WoW.’

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It’s been more than a month since the last official Q&A batch. This does not come as a surprise, of course, since the entire Blizzard crew was busy dealing with the WorldWide Invitational event in Paris.

This Q&A batch is composed of a long, comprehensive “Chat with Devs” introduction, dealing with the new Vespene Gas mechanics, and six new answers to fan-submitted questions.

Chat with Devs: Since the Worldwide Invitational in Paris, the topic of the new Vespene Gas mechanic has come up a lot across many different fansites and message boards. Thus far, this is one of the biggest changes which will affect the macro management of bases in StarCraft II. To shed some more light on this new mechanic, I have gotten a chance to talk to Dustin Browder, our Lead Designer for StarCraft II, about the progress thus far of the new mechanic, as well as the objectives this new mechanic is designed to achieve.

  

To start, the new Vespene Gas mechanic is to further distinguish the play style in which players gather minerals versus gathering gas. In the original StarCraft, the gathering of gas was very linear in the rate in which gas is gathered. Often, players would put 3-4 workers on the gas, and the players would forget about it until the geyser was depleted. Minerals on the other hand, were much more exponential in the rate of growth and were also often played differently amongst different races. Zerg would likely expand rapidly with less drones in each expansion and Protoss/Terran could sustain a sizeable force with higher numbers of workers on a smaller number of expansions.

 

How the New Vespene Gas Mechanic Works
For StarCraft II, with the new Vespene Gas mechanic, players will have 2 gas geysers at their starting position. These geysers will start with X amount of gas (currently 600 and subject to balance) and at any time players can purchase additional gas in their geysers for X minerals (currently 100 and subject to balance). With each purchase of additional gas for your geyser, the geyser increases with X gas (currently 600 and subject to balance) and the geyser shuts down for 45 seconds. When a geyser is depleted, workers will still be able to gather gas at a low rate of 2 per round (subject to balance).

 

How the New Vespene Gas Mechanic Plays
With this new gas mechanic, players have a wider variety of strategies in developing and maintaining their refineries, as well as additional attention needed to make sure they are collecting gas at the most efficient rate. On the production side, players now also have to decide between sticking to Tier 1 units longer, or to play it balanced with one geyser, or even max out on gas to invest heavily on teching and higher tech units. Additional, the relationship between minerals and gas have an added layer of depth since investing in additional gas will actually cost the player minerals as well. How often a player invests in gas will also not necessarily be consistent through the game too and will depend upon what units that player is currently choosing to mass. Scouting too has an added layer of depth as well, as a players gas collecting play style may determine if the player is teching to a higher tier mineral heavy unit (like a Dark Templar) or a higher tech gas heavy unit (like a High Templar).

 

Overall, players will have to build the appropriate buildings as well as gather resources in a particular method in order to execute a certain strategy at a professional level. It is the hope of the development team that this new mechanic will not only make gas collecting more interesting, but also increase the amount of macro management skill needed to compete in StarCraft II at the top levels while at the same time making the game playable for mid level players without using some of these more advanced techniques.

Aside from an adjustment to the numbers involved, the system described is the same as the one revealed during the WWI event, which we have already covered:

All these major changes have been implemented to StarCraft 2 for one purpose: complicate the “macro” portion of the game, which has been downsized severely with the introduction of new and improved user interface aspects, and mainly, Multiple Building Selection (MBS) – which allows players to select all their similar unit producing buildings together and deliver a single command to construct units out of all of them.

These changes will steal some of the added focus to the micromanagement portion of StarCraft 2, which pro-gamers, who’ve had a chance to play the game extensively, have reported about, and divert it back to base and economy management. Other such changes, meant to give players more macromanagement decisions to play with without dumbing down the UI, are being considered by Blizzard.

Check out our post about the subject here.

Moving on, the Q&A portion has interesting new tidbits and clarifications:

1. How exactly does the Corruptors attack work? Is it a stacking debuff that takes effect after a certain number of stacks? And if so can the debuff time out? Would you be able to hit and run kill for example Battlecruisers with a few Corruptors over a couple of minutes?

 

The attack is technically a debuff, but does not do damage over time. Every time the Corruptor attacks a unit, it’ll leave a debuff on it for a couple seconds. If the unit dies within those couple seconds, the unit will be corrupted.

This description of the Corruptor is incomplete, as evident by the Zerg reveal video, where a group of Corruptors corrupted a few Terran fliers on their own. The Corruptors likely cause damage themselves, or at least damage that goes towards Corrupting a unit which does not actually lower its physical hitpoints. Aside from this, the Corruptor also leaves a “Corrupting debuff” on the attacked unit, which causes it to become Corrupt should it die while under the effect.

2. What are the current stats and build times for the Queen defensive buildings?

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To catch us up, Zerg defensive buildings arent built by the queen anymore. Instead, they are built from the drone once again.

 

Spine crawler:
- Only hits ground
- Health is 300 (uprooted health 100)
- Movement speed is 2.25 (1 off of creep)
- Damage is 20 +20 armored
- Range is 7
- Attack speed is 1.5 sec

 

Spore Crawler:
- Only hits air
- Health is 300 (uprooted health 100)
- Movement speed is 2.25 (1 off of creep)
- Damage is 15
- Range is 7
- Attack speed is .8608

The developers have decided that the Zerg deserve means to create defenses that don’t rely on the Queen, which can’t be everywhere at once. The new defensive colonies, aside from being granted mobility, are almost identical to their StarCraft 1 versions. However, the Queen likely still possesses her “Swarm Infestation” ability, allowing her to turn any building into a defensive structure temporarily.

3. The Queen seems to be a very potent unit, although its tasks are more defensive ones, it can be used in crazy rush strategies, according to Karunes experiences. Well, if the Nydus Worm was able to transport even queens, she would get even more potent. You could easily think of crazy rushes using your opponents creep to just overwhelm him with your units AND your defensive structures. So here is the simple question: Can the Nydusworm transport queens among all the other units?

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Defensive structures will not be able to enter the Nydus tunnel network, but the Queen will be able to. Furthermore, the Queen will no longer be able to build defensive structures. Drones will morph into defensive structures, similar to the original StarCraft.

 

4. When the Zerg Sunken Colony is uprooted and on the move is it more vulnerable to enemy attack?

 

Yes, the Spine and Spore Crawlers will have less hit points while they are uprooted. The actual number of hit points will be determined through balance testing.

 

5. In many cases, the micromanagement of units in StarCraft revolved around gameplay mechanics (Dragoon dance, Mutalisk stacking, Reaver/Shuttle micro, etc.), rather than special abilities with cooldown/charges (Stalker’s Blink, Phoenix’s Overload, etc.).

 

Is the amount of this kind of special abilities in SC2 a concern of Blizzard, and how would this affect the overall gameplay?

 

Players will still have dependence on both gameplay mechanics as well as special abilities. For instance, Stalkers will have the basic dancing mechanic as Dragoons had in the original StarCraft. Marauders are another unit highly dependent on micromanagement to get the most effectiveness out of the unit, making sure you use their attacks slowing effect at opportune times.

 

Though for StarCraft II, we are introducing much more positional micromanagement, which will amplify units damage significantly. A Colossus will fire in a line and lining up that radius with the enemy units will be crucial in battles. Flanking Jackals from multiple angles will surely add to its potency as well.

 

Overall, we definitely want to balance the game with both plenty of gameplay mechanics as well as special abilities that create opportunities for the players to initiate clever strategies as well as innovative maneuvers on the battlefield.

Unlike what many people may think, Blizzard’s developers know what made StarCraft 1 the great game that it is, and are not likely to forget to implement one of the most important and fun aspects of battle in their new game.

6. Terrans currently appear to be at a disadvantage in terms of troop mobility, (as compared to ‘Warp-in’ and ‘Nydus Worm’) are there any plans to bring back the, ‘drop-pod’ or other new transport mechanic?

 

Actually, we consider the Terran side to be quite mobile. Let us first look at the Reapers. This unit is the fastest ground unit in the game which traverses terrain without even having a spotter. In addition, the Medivac Dropships, allow added mobility to all Terran ground units. With the addition of the Dropship being able to heal, it has become even more of a staple in Terran strategies, giving even more increased incentive for players to build Dropships than the original StarCraft. On top of this, Vikings providing both ground and air support at a click of a button, gives that added support of mobility and options when moving a Terran army around.

 

The method in which Terran will be mobile is indeed different than Warp-in and Nydus Worm, though they are not considered less mobile than the other races.

Also worth mentioning is the Terran’s ability to relocate their buildings by lifting them into the air and repositioning them on the ground. Aside from that, the Salvage ability makes it easy for Terrans to create impromptu production bases, knowing that the investment will not be lost.

In accordance with the StarCraft tradition, one race lacks a distinct ability that is available to the other two races, while still managing to function in a balanced way. While the Terran race may lack a point-and-click transportation method which the Protoss and Zerg now have, they will not be at a disadvantage on the whole.

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Dustin Browder, StarCraft 2’s lead game designer, has given an interview to IncGamers’s brand new StarCraftWire.net. He discusses everything from the map editor to super units in length and provides some insight into the gameplay design process.

Highlights:

So when will the Starcraft II editor become available to modders?

 

I don’t know yet, it’ll certainly be shipped with the game but I don’t know the answer to whether it will be earlier. That would be cool though.

Could the StarCraft 2 map editor be released before the game? Blizzard has not done this before, but some other companies have turned to this move to increase interest in their game before it is released, especially if it has been baking in the development oven for a long while.

Concerning 3D graphics, what’s tools do you need? In StarCraft it was just using paint and opening it and just adding new units. What 3D do you consider for modders? Will you be giving your own editor for the graphics?

 

I think we may ship the art tools but you still have to have a 3D program, there’s no way around that.

 

Well, StarCraft seems very… “conservative” would be a good word I suppose. Were there any other concepts that you discussed at the beginning of the development process that you ended up scrapping because you felt; “no, we want it to be like it was”?

 

Some… By the time I started working on the project three years ago the team really wanted to make a game that was true to the legacy of the original StarCraft. So in terms of “are we being too conservative or not?” We talked about that every day. It was a constant discussion.

It’s obvious that the same debate the fans are always engaged in – is StarCraft 2 enough of a “new game”? – is shared by the developers as well. Currently, it looks like Blizzard has managed to stay true to StarCraft 1 while enhancing it in almost every possible way and while introducing new ideas that further differentiate the races, creating a new experience if not a completely new game.

When asked about the Rock-Paper-Scissor relationship between units, Dustin provides a good explanation for how unit interactions in StarCraft work:

It’s not even just that, of the relationships in StarCraft; lot of them aren’t even Rock Paper Scissors, which is one of the things that makes the game so exciting. One of the standard RTS paradigm is that we use the Rock Paper Scissors but a lot of the relationships, especially in the early tech tree of StarCraft, are positional based. It’s not so much *whether I beat you* its *where do we fight*.

 

Zerglings will crush Zealots in the open field. They’ll just overrun them completely, and these are both the core units. Whereas the Zealots, at the choke, will just kill hundreds of Zerglings based on the Zerglings getting all trapped up behind. So in addition to where you fight there are also the questions of micro that are really interesting.

 

What we are really worried about are overlapping roles, it’s a constant struggle for us, but if you go there and play it now you can find a couple:

 

Player: “What about these guys”
Dustin: “Yes, I know!! They overlap, oh my god”.

Many RTS games completely rely on unit statistics and their predictable interactions to determine the outcome of battle. It is indeed one of StarCraft’s greatest strengths that so many other factors affect the result of an engagement between units, and produces equal match ups between even the lowliest of units and the most powerful ones.

Which particular unit has been the most problematic one when working, balance wise, not only for the Zerg but the other races as well?

 

The Mothership – hands down.

 

What is the problem with it?

 

Well, by its size it doesn’t look like a super unit from other RTS games. The problem here with super units is we want every unit to be a decision. There’s no point in shipping a unit if the player says: “I have to build that, it’s powerful, I should always build that. If I get to this tech level, I build it.”

 

We don’t have that in StarCraft II, the games meatier then that; you have to work for everything. So we don’t like the “super units”… The Mothership visually seems to suggest that, but at the same time we don’t want that to be part of the core gameplay experience so we’re continually balancing the ship, we’re continually looking for a new spell kit for this unit to make sure there are reasons to build it, really solid reasons, and really solid reasons not to build it.

 

Today the really solid reasons not to build it, and it’s been this way for many months, is the Mothership can’t really, cost for cost, defend itself effectively in the air. This means you can’t have air superiority dumped on the Mothership. If you already have your superiority, go for it, the Mothership is a good addition, but like I say; “it’s been a big pain.” It’s not helpful that it’s located at the end of the tech tree against how fast StarCraft games can be and how brutal it can be. There is a great chance that you can die within the first three or four minutes. So even in our play test process we don’t get to see this unit as often as we like:

 

Designer: “Did you get to play with the Mothership”
Tester: “Well, no, we didn’t, we topped out at the Immortals and Stalkers/Colossus”
Designer: “Ok ok ok, play again, play real hard”
Designer: “Did you get to play with the Mothership”
Tester: “No, no, we didn’t really get that high in the tech tree”

 

So once in a while it happens and then we’ll get some data but it just makes it a lot more complicated. We get a lot more data obviously on play testing Stalkers, Zerglings, Marines and all these guys because you see them all the time.

The Mothership is one of the units which has gotten the most attention – both from fans and from the developers – and has changed a lot accordingly. The Monthly Topic initiated for its sake generated a lot of comments and ideas, and Blizzard is still trying to nail down the right formula for making this unit worthy of the StarCraft 2 Protoss.

How did you decide to change the Queen that dramatically? Like, from a flying unit to a ground unit, from a mass unit to one-only unit?

 

It started conceptionally as kind of a story hit, we felt like the Queen was an opportunity to create a creature that owns the base, that lives inside and that she somehow lays eggs maybe, she’s monstrous and evil – like a Queen that you may see in an ant hive or a film.

 

We wanted that Queen, because we felt like the old Queen didn’t really hit that vibe. For example; that Queen could be called any other name and you’d be fine with that. It wasn’t a Queen in the classic sense, so that was the core idea.

 

How could we make this unit into something that feels like the Queen and we tried it a bunch of different ways and for awhile she was laying eggs to create weak organisms, so for example, there’d be different types of Hydralisks running around. That was kind of fun but then it got confusing, like which Hydralisk could attack me in the air, and what do I counter that with, I don’t remember.

 

So it was kind of a problem, so we’ve sort of settled down on this base defender which seems pretty successful, I don’t know if it’s really good enough for StarCraft II [but] that’s what we’re going to find out. It seems pretty fun.

The Zerg Queen is another unit that has gone through many changes, but this one is more set in its role due to story considerations, unlike the numerous incarnations of the Terran Thor and the Protoss Mothership. While the current “base mother” role is not likely to change, there is still plenty of room for flexibility left in terms of implementation.

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While Diablo 3 is definitely the main highlight of the 2008 WWI, there’s still a lot to write home about when it comes to StarCraft 2. We’ve got new, action heavy screenshots, interviews with Blizzard’s developers, presentations that show off the qualities of StarCraft 2, and reports of new things that have appeared in the game.

First up, highlights from the developer panels:

• A group of Overlords are used to cover the entirety of the viewable map with Creep (or “Mucus” in French), using their Excrete Creep ability
• Nydus Worms are more expensive than other races’ transports, with the advantage being that the transported units aren’t risked in transit. Also, the Worms now need Creep at their exit point – which is not a major problem, considering the Creep-spewing Overlords.
• Crawler Buildings – Spine Crawler and Spore Crawler. These are like the Sunken and Spore colonies in StarCraft 1, only the Crawlers can move around and plant on Creep at will, allowing the Zerg to easily redeploy their defenses.

• A Queen is seen supplementing a Zerg base’s defenses with her various abilities
• Corruptors engage a small Terran air group composed of Battlecruisers and Vikings. It appears that corrupted units, which serve as stationary “turrets” for the Zerg, slowly lose health over time and are eventually destroyed by the corruption.
• Banelings are used as active mines: burrowed in the ground, they wait until a group of Marines moves over their position. The player unburrows them at the right time to inflict maximum damage, right in the middle of the group.
• Smart usage of the Nullifer’s Force Field ability is shown. This is a spectacle to be seen, so make sure you watch at 5:40 into this video. First, a choke point is created, which prevents the incoming Zerging swarm from engulfing the Protoss units, allowing the Zealots to dispatch them at their (relative) leisure. Then, the second wave of Zerg attackers meets a complete Force Field wall. The remaining Protoss Stalkers quickly Blink behind it and engage the Zerglings at range, killing most of them before the are able to cross the barrier.
• In the next bit, a Mothership is used to summon a force back into a Protoss base that comes under attack. The Mothership then comes under attack from a group of Vikings, and quickly immerses itself in a Time Bomb, negating the missile attack.
• The Terran’s theme is “guns, guns, and bigger guns“.

• The Thor currently has two abilities: Anti-Air Flak Cannons, making it a great support unit for a Siege Push (as seen in the video), and Self Repair, whose existence we speculated on in this older video.
• At 5:40, a major battle between Zerg and Protoss forces takes place. We recommend waiting for a higher quality video to be posted before watching this one.

Next, Rob Pardo answers questions from the audience. Here’s a summary of his answers:

• Heroes in single player will not impact gameplay in a serious way, serving to push the plot and dialog further instead.

• Rob says that the campaign will only have one ending and not alternate, race specific or choice-dependent ones, as is customary in Blizzard games, though there will be several different diverging sub-plots.
• The Mothership’s old Black Hole ability is no longer found on it, but Rob is hoping to see it return in some form, perhaps on another unit.
• The Thor is a difficult unit to find a role for – one that is separate from the Siege Tank or Battlecruiser.

***

Next, we have an amazing collection of screenshots (courtesy of StarCraft Source) straight from the most up-to-date build, featuring all the latest art enhancements and newest units and their designs:

Screenshot highlights:

A Lurker’s spiny attack is seen for the first time, while another Lurker is burrowed next to it.

A mobile Spine Crawler.

The Viking has received a slight touch up, and now looks more “mechanical” and square instead of round and fat.

The Nullifier’s attack has been beefed up, and it’s now sporting a more impressive beam weapon, similar to that of the Colossus. The Nullifer shown here is clearly attacking an air unit.

The Warp Rays have also received an updated look, which reflects their different role. No more are they the Protoss’ heaviest air unit, a title which they lost to the Carriers. They are now shorter, with the beam apparatus taking up the bulk of their mass. Their beam’s effect has also been enhanced.

The Swarm Guardians make their first high quality appearance. Their explosive plasma balls can also be seen.

Although many units have undergone significant changes, the most drastic adjustments were made to StarCraft 2’s economy and resource system. These changes will be covered tomorrow, once the dust settles. 

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