Written by Gradius |
Thursday, 11 March 2010 21:45
Blizzard has a long tradition of leaving things in their games' data files for the fans to ponder over, and such is the case with the StarCraft II beta. SC:L has extracted some information and many images from the beta .mpq files. The game images article contains images of planets, icons, upgrades, decals, portraits, textures and wireframes. The gamestrings article contains previews of the Wings of Liberty tutorial missions.
These as well as our upcoming articles will be in the "articles" section of the StarCraft II Beta sidebar to the left.
VG247 has recently had the chance to interview Dustin Browder, lead designer of StarCraft II:
What level of concurrency to you want to get to before the end of the beta?
Dustin Browder: I think we want to maintain about 10,000. It’s sort of our goal, and we’ve just about hit that at this point. I can see we’re at 9,000-something right now, and 10,000 is the goal. That makes our match-maker really happy, makes it really sing when we’re about at those numbers. If we get much higher than that we’ll just leave it, and if we see concurrency fall off we’ll add more keys until we get back to those numbers.
Are you seeing clicks-per-minute generally increase as you run the beta over time?
Dustin Browder: I’m sorry, I’m able to see it on a game-by-game basis; I’m not able to see it globally. But that’s a great question, and certainly a stat we’d love to have. We have a ton of stats right now, and we’re having a trouble getting at them a little bit. There’s a large volume of data that our business intelligence guys are working very hard to give us access to. What I have access to now is fairly limited. I have access to maps, I have access to win-loss by race and by skill, I have access to certain unit stats, but no, I don’t have access to action-per-minute on a global scale. I’m not able to see it increasing as we go. I imagine that it would.
Certainly, my experience in Call of Duty when it first released was quite terrifying. I’m getting to be in my late 30s. I went to play Call of Duty and I got owned for many days in a row. When I was in my late 20s and early 30s I used to be able to get top stop on a Counter-Strike server with no difficulty, and Counter-Strike’s a pretty fast game. Modern Warfare I was struggling with, but as I played in that first week, I pretty soon got back into the flow of things and I wasn’t losing every head-to-head match-up by half a second. So, I certainly hope that as people get used to the game their actions-per-minute go up, but I don’t have those figures for you, sir. I’m sorry.
Receiving: Captain Serl Gentry, Doctor, Special Research Ops
Captain Gentry:
Have a seat, Private. I can imagine that you're upset after what you've just been through.
Private Ayers:
Upset? Don't be silly, Captain: this wasn't a complete surprise. Nature doesn't just adapt. Nature cheats, changes the rules, and slips out the back door with your wallet while you're still trying to figure out what happened.
Captain Gentry:
I'm not sure I follow.
Private Ayers:
Sorry; those aren't my words. That's from my father, the venerable Dr. Talen Ayers. It's his own special flavor of insight: one part renowned research geneticist and two parts backwoods yokel. Always embarrassed the hell out of me.
Written by KDraconis |
Thursday, 04 March 2010 21:36
Another patch for StarCraft II has just arrived:
Balance Changes
TERRAN
Engineering Bay
Infantry Armor: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Infantry Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Armory
Vehicle Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Vehicle Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Ship Plating: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
Ship Weapons: The time required for each upgrade has been reduced by 30 seconds, decreasing each upgrade time from 190/220/250 seconds to 160/190/220 seconds.
PROTOSS
Zealot
The maximum shield capacity of this unit has been decreased from 60 to 50.
Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug where the Infestor's Neural Parasite ability could cause Reapers to lose the ability to move.
Fixed an issue that could use an incorrect HDR format on some ATI cards.
Fixed a crash that could happen on some ATI cards.
