Last week there was an event where select members of the press got to play a nearly-finished version of the upcoming StarCraft II beta and interview the developers. Here are the most interesting bits of news that surfaced:
- The game will apparently have no LAN play (source).
- Replays are now rewindable and you can view the match from any player’s viewpoint, similar to a first person VOD (source).
- The beta is essentially ready to go but the team is still working on making the new Battle.net usable for the general public. As a result the release date for the beta is still “when it’s done” (source).
- The new Battle.net will be free but creating custom tournaments and similar features might cost money (source).
- The single player game is not intended as a tutorial for the multiplayer and will have a wide array of mission types with each one almost a minigame unto itself (source 1, source 2).
- There will be instructional videos and something Blizzard are calling Challenges to teach new players the multiplayer portion of the game. Challenges are essentially specialized maps to familiarize players with specific aspects of the multiplayer, such as effective resource gathering or micromanagement (source).
I’ve seen a presentation of a terran-protoss combat of starcraft 2. At the end of the combat, 3 ghosts are launching nukes. After a nuke explodes, I have seen that something does not correspond to the reality:
1. the animation when a nuke explodes should be longer (about 5-7 seconds)
2. the nuke explosion sould be larger (not necessary a greater effect in killing nearby units but larger)
3. the closest units should vaporize, the next should be melted and so on. (this is explained by the amount of energy released in the chain-reaction).
4. as I have seen, I think that a better idea that could give a hell of power to the terrain would be to introduce some addicional “nuclear” type units like the ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) which would be nukes transported by missiles. Also there should be various types of nukes that would vary in yield – 25kilotones, 1 megatone (thermonuclear) etc.
5. the terrain that is under the explosion should remain contaminated for a short period of time, and the nearby neutral buildings should “suffer” from the effects of a nuke explosion
these are my comments, should anyone help me send them to the creators of StarCraft2 I would be very happy.
Thank you.