Comments on: StarCraft 2 Announced

by: cookiejesus

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:53:28 +0000

Truth to be told, this announcement practically made me wet my pants.

by: Droniac

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:59:04 +0000

Oh it’s definitely public, been posted across several news sites as well (e.g.: Firingsquad). They seem like a cool new take on the old units - looks promising. Now we just need that beta/demo/full version… although some Terran/Zerg info would be nice too

by: Cyrris

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 12:20:20 +0000

Hooray! Looks like carriers will still be in the game, though now called “Tempests” (and they look smaller as well).

Once again YouTube proves it’s worth with an overview of more Protoss units: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30MBljXxg3M

Some crazy hover-board riding dudes are there, plus a new archon. They are all introduced formally, but if you look carefully in the very last battle scene in the middle you can see what looks like a new Reaver unit as well.

While I have reservations about posting what was a PC Gamer exclusive, if the video has half a million views on YouTube I’d say it’s well and truly public now.

by: Cyrris

Thu, 24 May 2007 13:02:06 +0000

Yep. Particularly with that Immortals example, the player has to move all the Immortals to well within firing range so the ones at the back can reach the siege tanks. So the group doesn’t actually stop moving (and doesn’t actually start firing) until a good 3 seconds until after the siege tanks were in range of the first immortals. And 3 seconds is a long time in a situation like that.

Now that you mention why it’s not possible with the ships, it’s quite obvious. Duh. Though it wouldn’t have actually been a problem back in original StarCraft I suppose seeing as the sprites all had no issues overlapping each other. That said, this could create some annoying issues with just one’s own aircraft. I used to stack my carriers all together with my arbiter, and I can’t imagine being able to do that as easily in the 3D scene. Not that there are any carriers or arbiters anymore… guess we’ll see.

I’m sure there must be a clever way of working out the moving air combat though. If the game supports physics I’m sure it could support some clever vector calculations to make sure units don’t fly in to each other while engaging, and stop when required, or only allow it when the target is moving away from your craft.

by: Droniac

Thu, 24 May 2007 10:53:43 +0000

Because otherwise they would bump into each other? Most of these air units fire from the front solely (e.g.: Warp Rays, Battlecruisers, Hydralisks, etc.) so they have to be facing their enemy to fire - can you imagine the amount of suicidal collisions if this were to be done in 2D? O.o (rather than having ships fly and fire at slight angles - so they won’t kamikaze into one another and turn air combat into one giant rain of colliding debris over the battlefield)

Aside from that - 3D space combat just looks way cooler. Homeworld and Empire at War proved that - although EaW was horrid to control with ships flying all over the place, couldn’t really select anything in large firefights. Still looked awesome though. I suppose it (3D Air Combat) wouldn’t be necessary if they just changed the way the current air units fired to be more along the lines of the Protoss mothership (which can fire in pretty much all directions), but that would demand a redesign for many units.

Further on shooting while moving: this really should be in - and if they want to do both, then make shooting while moving a little less accurate. Regardless, nowadays shooting while moving is pretty much a genre standard for non-fantasy RTS games, simply because it’s so much more fun, not to mention logical. It’d be great if Blizzard could still implement this in StarCraft II - at the very least for ground units. Right now it just looks silly when the Immortals move towards the Siege Tanks in the gameplay trailer, but refuse to fire until they’ve stopped moving.