SC2Blog is going to Blizzcon, and so are 4 of our readers - we are running a last-minute, 24 hour, Old School competition. The first readers to answer the quiz correctly will receive Blizzcon entrance badges!

Questions:

1) It’s StarCraft B.net Season 2, You are on River Styx versus some Protoss player. A few minutes into the game, your worker line is decimated by a very surprising strategy - a Reaver that pops in and out of a shuttle.

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Fill in the x’s in your opponent’s name:

x_COOL_xxx

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2) Name at least 3 members of the IN clan.

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3) What was the name of the popular 20$ one-time fee service that WarCraft 2 games were played on?

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4) What was the name of the league that put Tillerman on a trading card?

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5) What MIT student became a brilliant Protoss player, contributed greatly to StarCraft: BW’s balance, and later became a Blizzard employee based on the aforementioned achievements?

Send your answers to Anderson AT Sc2blog.com, along with your name. The first four people to answer all questions correctly will receive a confirmation, and their details will be sent to Blizzard.

Remember that you must not only answer all questions correctly, but also be able to attend to convention at Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California on October 10 and 11.

As Blizzcon looms near, Blizzard’s key employees and community managers have been dishing out quite a few 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.

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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?

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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.

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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, managed 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?

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

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

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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 at 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?

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

An 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’?

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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.

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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.

Three new videos, all in high definition, have emerged from the Leipzig Gaming Convention. Although players were given the chance to play for 15 minutes at a time, so far, these short videos contain the only worthy StarCraft 2 gameplay footage from the event.

The first video shows a Protoss base, as it is being built, up close. Nothing majorly interesting happens, but one can’t help but notice how pretty it all looks.

The next one is the most interesting of the bunch. It features a Terran attack on a minimally-defended Zerg base.

The two defensive buildings in place, the Spine Crawlers, are quickly taken out by Siege Tanks in siege mode, and the reinforcements being hatched come too little and too late. The Swarm units are making their first appearance - these can be seen when the Terran army destroys the Spawning Pool at 0:47.

The Swarm are the same units that emerge from the Swarm Guardian’s new attack, and are basically StarCraft 2’s Broodling units. They are very fragile, deal little damage - 4 points at melee range, and die off by themselves after a few seconds. However, they serve to keep an attacking enemy busy for a short time, which can be precious under some circumstances. In this video, we can see another great benefit - they close the distance to the attacking Marines quickly, drawing Siege Tank fire to them, and this greatly damages the friendly Marines themselves.

The Swarm are only created when major buildings are destroyed - the more important the building is, the more of them will come out. This is very reminiscent of the Command & Conquer games, where basic, wounded infantry units have a chance of popping out of destroyed buildings.

The rest of the video shows the slow and painful death of the Zerg base by the remaining Terran Siege Tanks. Two Reapers make an appearance before the end, moving in on the mineral line, quickly mowing down Drones with their dual guns. It’s clear that these units were designed with devastating the enemy economy in mind, as evident by the amazing speed in which two of them completely obliterate all the workers.

The last video is another short one, with a few brief, interesting bits. A few seconds of the living, breathing Zerg base are seen, and the video quickly jumps to show Protoss units abusing an unhatched Zerg egg. Later, a group of Zealots and a Stalker are captured at the moment when they destroy a neutral barrier, moving on to attack another Zerg base.

Throughout the videos, and especially in the Zerg portions, it’s very easy to see how alive everything looks. The creep is constantly shifting underneathe its purple skin, buildings have protruding, constantly undulating tenctacles, and everything seems to breath. Everything in StarCraft 2 is always in motion, enhancing the sense of immersion,  yet such high level of passive activity might impede the player’s ability to focus on meaningful animations. Either way, it’s highly apparent, with each new demonstration, that the graphical aspects of StarCraft 2 are being constantly honed and adjusted, just like the gameplay.

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.