Starcraft Junkie

This model came out 2 days ago. Figured I’d quick repost it here.

Cool huh? Very deadly looking like the original. But creepier.

I’m sure they will be made by the Queen again in some ability incarnation in SCII.

The month of February began with a reinvigorated, hopeful, and well justified beta rumor frenzy. Blizzard has been contacting gamers, websites and certain individuals about their StarCraft 2 beta access, and all eyes will be focused on Blizzavision’s public conference call, only 3 days away. Blizzard is setting up the pieces for the most massive RTS game beta test in history – a beta that will test not only StarCraft 2’s mechanics and balance, but also the revolutionary gaming platform Blizzard has been working on for a long while.

Blizzard’s Korean community representative commented on the topic and summarized Blizzard’s intentions in the following response:

(Credit for translation goes to our friends at IncGamers)

We know that all of you are very curious about the development of the Beta with the release of many Starcraft 2 Beta Testing related news across various news portals.

Unfortunately, the specifics of beta testing have not been finalized yet and I cannot give you a definite answer through this thread.

But we are trying our best to make the necessary preparations ready and introduce Starcraft 2 as fast as we can. I can definitely say that the Beta test will not just involve industry experts and other VIPs but rather will involve all fans of the franchise.

We understand how long and excruciating the wait was, and we also understand what you want the most right now as well.

We will tell you about any specifics that become finalized as soon as we can.

In the meantime, Blizzard has made some standard updates in the form of new features on the official site and new bits of information from the blues, Blizzard’s official RTS community managers.

The StarCraft 2 website has been updated with new fan art, all very inspiring StarCraft works.

Zhydaris took the time to post about the updated Zerg Baneling mechanics on the Battle.net forums in response to a 5-question inquiry by a fan.

1 - The Banelings cannot detonate while burrowed, they have to unburrow first and then explode. I know what you’re thinking. “Hey, probably exploding while burrowed would be a better warfare tactic”. You must understand that exploding in the name of the Zerg is indeed a great satisfaction for a Baneling, thus they prefer to unburrow in order to showcase their enthusiasm for their role by exploding with a smirk on their face. If you zoom close enough you will see a little smile on their little glowing face of theirs. Ah, gotta love the Banelings.

2 – They’ll wait for your command. If you don’t tell them to explode, they’ll just wait while staying burrowed. That’s nice for setting up ambushes.

3 - They always wait for your command.

4 – They’ll not behave like Infested Terrans. The attack-move command is not going to be interpreted as “Go and explode at this location”, but rather as “Move to this location and attack any enemy unit. If you can’t spot an enemy unit, just sit there”.

5 – It’s comparable to a D8 Charge, yes, the explosion covers pretty much the same area.

The above answers clear the air (if not to most Zerg players’ satisfaction) about the Baneling’s most dangerous, coolest and problematic property – the ability to act as a powerful underground mine. Some players will undoubtedly be disappointed that Blizzard took the safer (balance-wise) path of forcing the suicidal Zerg unit to unborrow prior to exploding. Of course, this won’t prevent them from still being very dangerous in this role.

Zerg units were not alone in getting blue attention, as both Terran Reapers and Protoss Nullifiers were mentioned by Blizzard’s community teams. Most importantly, the Nullifier, the superstar of the freakishly awesome 3rd battle report, has been renamed to Sentry and has received an updated unit model.

Kapeselus took the time to clarify how the Reapers’ D-8 charges act once deployed. The D8s have a 2 second delay before exploding, providing some panic dodging time, and are indestructible, at least in the current build.

In the current build you cannot destroy D-8 Charges. By that I mean that you can select them, but they are indestructible (they don’t have HP like other units do, just like units caught by Arbiter’s Stasis Field in SC:BW for example). If you are playing against Reapers though, you can still dodge the charges, as it takes them around 2 seconds to blow up.

He also answers some follow-up questions about the dangerous use of the charges against buildings:

D-8 charges don’t stick to buildings. You can only throw them directly to the ground and if you target a building they will just appear next to it. They also only damage ground units, so they won’t do any damage to your buildings if you manage to lift them off before the charges blow up.
You cannot damage burrowed zerg units if they are not affected by any means of detection. For example if you raid your opponent’s mineral line and he burrows his drones you won’t be able to damage them without a detector, like for example a Scanner Sweep.

D-8 Reaper raids are going to be a major issue for enemies of the Terran to take into account when constructing their bases. Clumped up Supply Depot farms, undefended worker lines, or expensive, high-tier buildings – all will be easy pickings for quick and painful Reaper raids.

Last but not least, Matt Horner – one of StarCraft 2’s key Terran characters – has been awarded with his very own lore page on the official StarCraft 2 website, being added to the respectable list of heroes: Jim Raynor, Zeratul and Tychus Findlay. Read it here.

“…he was young, smart, idealistic, and bored.”

Hey guys,

The results for the January poll of the month are in:

All of them takes the lead. But more specifically Protoss would be the most popular race, but only by a few percentage points. Looks just about even.

February’s poll is for StarCraft II as well:

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

We know there are a lot more heroes to choose from. Just picked a main one from each race.

And below is the Screen Shot of the Month submitted by me again (surprised?). Don’t forget, you can post your submission in the thread on the forums and we’ll put it up and credit you. The map for this one is 5v3 hard computers 50 upgrades (which really just ended up being 3vs3). You can see the destruction of the enemy base from all 3 races.

Screenshot by Quelex.

At no surprise to us, IGN PC named StarCraft II as one of its top anticipated games for 2010 in a new feature. The writers even saved the best for...

Yesterday I posted a listing from the SCII Beta Support site for possible system requirements. Blizzard has asked sites who have posted the list to remove it because they have deemed it as a placeholder that should not have been posted and is inaccurate.

Sorry for any confusion. When the actual specs come out we will post them when we find out.

At any rate, as said in the previous and deleted post: due to the recent large amounts of activity from Blizzard it is likely in my opinion we will have an announcement about the beta release in the coming months. Especially if they’re still aiming to get the game out before 2011.

As mentioned in the previous post, the StarCraft twitter page from Blizzard has been constantly updating almost every day. Now, the Blizzard Support pages have system requirements posted. The post was here and it seems they may have removed it to eliminate the confusion. They don’t want people buying computers with specs like this because things may change. I see that as unlikely, but you never know. So here is what they had posted:

Minimum Requirements:
Operating System
Windows XP / XP64 (Service Pack 3)
Windows Vista / Vista64 (service Pack 1)
Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor
Intel Pentium IV 1.3GHz
AMD XP 1500+
Memory
(Windows XP) 512mb
(Windows Vista) 1024mb
(Windows 7) 1024mb
Graphics
3D graphics processor with Hardware Transform and Lighting with 32 MB VRAM
such as an ATI Radeon 7200 or NVIDIA GeForce 2 class card or better
Hard Drive
15Gb (of free space) -
DirectX
DirectX9.0c

Recommended Requirements:
Processor
Intel Pentium D
AMD 64 X2
Memory
(Windows XP) 1024mb
(Windows Vista) 2048mb
(Windows 7) 2048mb
Graphics
3D graphics processor with Vertex and Pixel Shader capability with 128 MB VRAM
such as an ATI Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT class card or better

So as you can see it’s pretty standard stuff now a day that any computer that is over $500 usually has. It seems Blizzard has stood by their claim to make the game accessible to many different computers and not just the high end.

Mac users may have also noticed no word on the OS for the SCII beta. I don’t know about the beta, but it would seem a strange move by Blizzard to not release StarCraft II for Macs later on as they have with all their other games.

With this information about the minimum system requirements released, and all of this work being posted up it seems Blizzard may be getting the beta out relatively soon. Maybe within the next month or two.

My guess would be by late April/mid May at the latest.

Anyhow, CreepColony.com is keeping an eye out on SCII news while we work on the updating of our site. So give us a bookmark or sign up for the RSS feed to keep up as we get more information.

January hasn’t featured any significant official update from Blizzard (yet),  but a few pieces of information have surfaced through the constantly-growing RTS community team. Here’s a quick run down of the recent updates to the StarCraft 2 Universe.

The role and functionality of the Changeling, a shape-shifting spy unit that can be spawned by Overseers for an energy cost, has been clarified by Avarius.

The changeling’s transformation is permanent. Once it is within range of opposing forces, it will transform to that race’s basic tier 1 unit (marine, zealot, or zergling) and remain so for its duration. In the case of a team game or FFA where there are multiple races, the changeling will transform to the race it encounters first and not change again.

When questioned about the viability of the ability in high-level 1 on 1 matches, Avarius made it clear that he considers the Changeling a worthy addition to the Zerg unit roster.

I definitely think you will see them used effectively, even in high level 1v1 play. Who wouldn’t want an essentially free scout (only costs energy) to use to gather intel on their opponent? With the potential that you opponent might not kill it immediately, it can provide you with a sustained scouting advantage. Even high level players can get caught up in harassment, or base management and may miss this little guy sneaking into their base.

The next blue posts were translated by a SC:L staff member, and come from the Korean side of the Battle.net forums:

When more supply is required, and when I have to quickly build three Supply Depots at the same time, this is usually the method that I use.

1) I select some mining SCVs by drag selection or Ctrl + Left Click. It’s good to select at least three.

2) After pressing ‘B’ (building hotkey) then ‘S’ (Supply Depot hotkey), while holding Shift, consecutively left click at the locations you want to build at before right clicking a mineral patch.

3) Out of the selected SCVs, only three of them go to the selected locations and each build a Supply Depot, and once construction is complete they return to mining minerals.

That’s how automated things have become in StarCraft 2: building multiple supply depots and sending the workers back to harvest minerals is easily achieved by issuing one concentrated and short batch of commands, eliminating many of the repetitive actions otherwise required in the original game.

Another bit of info from Korea details the unit classification system, which has received a major overhaul in StarCraft 2. The new system is much more streamlined and simple, following clear rules that make hard unit counters very apparent.

Light armor, heavy armor, biological, mechanical, giant, psionic, etc. are some attributes that units can have.

For example, the Ultralisk has heavy armor biological giant attributes, whereas the Archon has the psionic attribute. You can probably tell from looking at the Archon, but not all units are divided into [light armor/heavy armor]. Damage calculation is also different from the previous game. Units attacks always do at least 100% of the damage value shown on the screen. And then, depending on the attacks property, additional damage may be dealt when attacking units with specific attributes.

For example the Archons base damage is 25, and deals an additional 10 damage against biological targets. Therefore, Zerg units (which are usually biological) take 35 damage when attacked by Archons. And in the case of the Siege Tank, its Siege Mode deals 60 damage, so it deals 60 damage to all ground units. If the old system of explosive, concussive and small, medium, large was used, then Marines would take reduced damage from a Siege Tank.

On the topic of friendly damage, Zhydaris explains which explosion is ally-friendly and which should be more carefully handled:

… exploding Banelings do not damage allied units: both your units and those of your allies are not affected at all by the acid explosion.

Reaper’s explosive charge does actually damage allies, as well as your own units and buildings, so be careful when playing with those flashing packages.

The official StarCraft 2 website has been updated with a brand new 6-page Mothership story, including a short, action packed clip of a Mothership-backed Protoss force decimating a Zerg army. The Mothership sports a slightly altered design and a new attack animation.

StarCraft 2’s community team has also revealed a new doodad screenshot via Twitter. The art is high-detail and worth a closer look – make sure you click on the image for the full-size screenshot.

The following concrete and un-speculative bit of info is bound to make quite a few people happy, as it serves as real evidence that StarCraft 2 is indeed being tested live on Battle.net or, at least, that it is about to be in the immediate future. The Blizzard official support page now includes lengthy support articles for StarCraft 2!

The guide gets quite specific and even includes a detailed StarCraft 2 Mac Version Video troubleshooting article!

There’s also some hype about the the recently announced Activision-Blizzard public conference call that will be broadcast on the internet, as it might include a clear plan of action for the upcoming months.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATVI) intends to release its fourth quarter and calendar year 2009 results after the close of the market on Wednesday, February 10, 2010. In conjunction with this release, Activision Blizzard will host a conference call that will be broadcast over the Internet.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010
1:30 pm Pacific Time (4:30 pm Eastern Time)

To listen to the call, please log onto:

http://investor.activision.com/events.cfm

New on IGN PC is an article comparing the runaway hit film Avatar and its many similarities to the top massively multiplayer online game in the world....

Hey everyone. Hope you’re having a good new year.

The StarCraft II team at Blizzard seems to be scrambling to do a lot of work lately on the game (if you follow their Twitter page anyhow).

One video popped up somewhere we thought you Protoss guys might like. It’s a Protoss Mother Ship destroying some Zerg forces.

We are happy to announce that we have added a new language to our StarCraft II site. Italian speakers can now check out the latest news about StarCraft II in their own language. We have also added a landing page for our Polish community which will be expanded upon in the near future. In addition to translating the site into these two languages, we will also be releasing StarCraft II itself in Italian and Polish! Take a moment to check out the new StarCraft II sites and the new Battle.net forums for Italian, Polish, and Russian speakers!

Italian website: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=it_it
Polish splash page: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=pl_pl
Italian media alert: http://eu.blizzard.com/it-it/company/press/pressreleases.html?100120
Polish media alert: http://eu.blizzard.com/en-gb/company/press/pressreleases.html?100120pl

Additionally we received info from X answering a question whether or not we will be able to swap between langauges in-game:

First of all, we are of course also localizing in Russian, since this has been announced from the beginning, you can check out the Russian site here: http://eu.starcraft2.com/index.xml?locale=ru_ru
We have also added russian forums today (http://forums.battle.net/index.html?sid=3007) as well as Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/StarCraftRU) and Twitter (http://twitter.com/starcraft_ru) pages that will soon fill up with more content.

Concerning switching between languages, to start off you will have the language of the box that you purchase. We are planning on releasing language packs at some point, but this will not be for release. We will get information on this to you most likely after release of StarCraft 2.