Starcraft II beta is out!

[JohannesH]

lol @ IK

arguing with idiots can be fun so here we go

You say you could stand up to Starcraft progamers if you had better interface to use than them. Well I dont know if you were joking but...

Think abot what makes the progamers so good... Not just because they can mash buttons so fast or have accurate mouseclick. They know whats going on in the game, know the different builds in and out, and yes they know how to execute it too - but doing things fast is totally linked to knowing how to and when to do it. Good multitasking is about awareness and focus.
You on the other hand, interface change wont help much with the fact that your strategic understanding of the game is weak compared to them. No matter the interface youre still gonna do micro mistakes and forget stuff too, like anybody.

How many % of a Spring players ability is about compensating for the unfriendly interface, I'd like to know.


Starcraft teamliquid starleague finals is tonight btw.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmes ... _id=113641

[knorke]

How many % of a Spring players ability is about compensating for the unfriendly interface, I'd like to know.

At beginning 100% when you have to turn off a million of crashing widgets but when it all works maybe 5% (like some widget activated itself and now your right mouse button shoots pink unicorns or something)

Things that are defined as micro in starcraft but are totally standard in spring and imo gay:
-You move a selectiongroup of marines&tanks around. You want to siege the tanks and use marines stimpack.
So to siege the tanks you have to deselect everything, select only the tanks and press o hotkey. Then select only the marines and press i.
If you have only marine selected together with your tanks, no hotkeys will work and the siege/stimpack buttons will not show in the interface.
All spells/building commands/hotkeys are affected by this.
<->
You can still press k to cloak your commander if have some rocketbots selected with him.

No way (like waypoints) to make constructors return to collecting minerals after building something. SCV start harvesting gas on their own but everything else they just stay there idle.

Can not doubleclick buildings to select more than one. So to make 5 barracks each train one marine you need to click 5 times selecting the barracks and press m five times. And maybe scroll around a bit because not all barracks are on screen.
Lololol good players place their barracks close to each other or have them hotkeyed so no need to scroll: Uhm yea, gay interface dictates gameplay. lol.

[Google_Frog]

No way (like waypoints) to make constructors return to collecting minerals after building something. SCV start harvesting gas on their own but everything else they just stay there idle.

Are you sure? I thought sc1 has this.

[Gota]

What is the point of this argument?clearly its a matter of preference.
some players enjoy having to micro in more detail and needing to baby sit the units more some don't.

[Hobo Joe]

Some people are masochistic or averse to things that could possibly give players with 5apm less than them a possible advantage. Oh noes.

[Gota]

By the way.
Soemthing SC 2 has over spring in terms of gameplay control.
Different rally pints for cons and regular units...
We still dont have a system that will all you to give different queues to cons and units that get built in a lab.

[yuritch]

No way (like waypoints) to make constructors return to collecting minerals after building something.

Speaking of SC: shift-right-clicking minerals after a build order (when unit moves to construction site) works with SCVs and Probes. I've done it many times. Not sure about Drones, they usually don't get to do anything after a structure finishes. Ofc this applies if the structure is NOT the Terran Refinery because in that case 'harvest gas' seems to be a part of the build order.

Yes, SC interface is intentionally micro-heavy. Even WarCraft III was better in that regard (autocast spells/abilities, subgroups in unit selection). Does SCII have any autocast abilities btw?

[JohannesH]

Can not doubleclick buildings to select more than one. So to make 5 barracks each train one marine you need to click 5 times selecting the barracks and press m five times. And maybe scroll around a bit because not all barracks are on screen.
Lololol good players place their barracks close to each other or have them hotkeyed so no need to scroll: Uhm yea, gay interface dictates gameplay. lol.

Similar things are in Spring. You can give a con 15 orders in advance, so that you dont need to select it again too soon. You put nanos on patrol so that you dont have to select them at all, though they will build stuff that you wouldnt want them to focus on at that point. You cant select your llt and 10 flash, and selfd only the llt. Its same principle, just abit different scope. Your time is limited and it affects your strategy.

Whats useful in SC UI in comparison to most Spring UI is that you get the icons of every unit you have selected. Its allows you to do things that are really hard to execute in Spring.

[jK]

Whats useful in SC UI in comparison to most Spring UI is that you get the icons of every unit you have selected. Its allows you to do things that are really hard to execute in Spring.

Something like this?

[Spawn_Retard]

By the way.
Soemthing SC 2 has over spring in terms of gameplay control.
Different rally pints for cons and regular units...
We still dont have a system that will all you to give different queues to cons and units that get built in a lab.

id fucking love this.

[pintle]

Whats useful in SC UI in comparison to most Spring UI is that you get the icons of every unit you have selected. Its allows you to do things that are really hard to execute in Spring.

Pls demonstrate 1 facet of SC interface which in any way gives a greater degree of control (IE execution of my meaningful decisions) than Spring.

[knorke]

you can see units in transporters.
lol i win

[pintle]

Tbh its always bugged me that I can't do "drive-by" drop offs with hover trans like you can with technicals/humvees in Zero Hour (scattering individual units around as you drive the fast transport thought their eco).

But yeah... touch├®

[JohannesH]

Whether units drop units on the move or have to stop for it isnt about the interface though :D

And ctrl groups work abit different in SC and Spring, depends on situation which is better. Yeah you can change the Spring UI to work in that way, or almost any shit can be widgetted sure... But most players dont care to spend 95% of their Spring time tuning their UI. And every building/unit has a hotkey by default in SC. Maybe other stuff too (& the transes) but I cant know since Ive never really played Sc multiplayer...
But even if basic Spring UI was superior in everyway to SC, everything else that I wrote is still true.

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

[luckywaldo7]

No way (like waypoints) to make constructors return to collecting minerals after building something.

Speaking of SC: shift-right-clicking minerals after a build order (when unit moves to construction site) works with SCVs and Probes. I've done it many times.?

Actually when the game was released it was impossible to give a unit waypoints after building a structure. A patch later added that functionality.

By the way.
Soemthing SC 2 has over spring in terms of gameplay control.
Different rally pints for cons and regular units...
We still dont have a system that will all you to give different queues to cons and units that get built in a lab.

id fucking love this.

Its called factory guard

Seriously though the ability to specify a different queue for each different unit in the lab would be great.

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

SPRING IS NOT LIMITED TO SELECTING ONLY 12 UNITS

[Gota]

Whether units drop units on the move or have to stop for it isnt about the interface though :D

And ctrl groups work abit different in SC and Spring, depends on situation which is better. Yeah you can change the Spring UI to work in that way, or almost any shit can be widgetted sure... But most players dont care to spend 95% of their Spring time tuning their UI. And every building/unit has a hotkey by default in SC. Maybe other stuff too (& the transes) but I cant know since Ive never really played Sc multiplayer...
But even if basic Spring UI was superior in everyway to SC, everything else that I wrote is still true.

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

Amen.
It is extremely frustrating that gameplay,balance and overall playability depends on you spending hours tweaking your ui and widget list..
Wouldnt it be much more fun,user friendly and overall better if each game in Spring had its list of lua and no 3rd party?so each game has its own ui,its own hotkeys,its own key combination gadgets etc..

[knorke]

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

you like that to view health of selected units?
spring has healthbar over the units and tooltip shows hitpoints of whole group. much better imo.

It is extremely frustrating that gameplay,balance and overall playability depends on you spending hours tweaking your ui and widget list..

I have almost everything disabled and springs interface is still best of all rts i've played.

Hotkeys for units/buildings (by default, you can define them) in spring would be nice but then you do not lose that much time by not having them as you would in starcraft. Because you can ie select more than one factory or loop build ques.

Yes, SC interface is intentionally micro-heavy.

Not intentionally. It was not made especially to produce buttonmash marathons, its just how most rts were in this time. Interface of most old rts suck compared to today.

I think it would be funny to see an alternative universe where for example C&C Red Alert 2 would be hailed by millions of fans and see progamers struggle with this similiar interface. lol harvester ai is bad on purpose, more micro!

especially especially especially especially. this world is especially stupid to type.

[luckywaldo7]

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

SPRING IS NOT LIMITED TO SELECTING ONLY 12 UNITS

For clarification, units only stack when you run out of room, otherwise you see them separately.

[JohannesH]

And Jk, thats nice but stacking the units of same type together kinda defeats the point to me.

SPRING IS NOT LIMITED TO SELECTING ONLY 12 UNITS

For clarification, units only stack when you run out of room, otherwise you see them separately.

Ok, its better then than what i thought. And starcrafts unit selection limit has nothing to do with this...

And Knorke you dont use those icons just to see hp. Its a fast way to clone your units to different targets. For example I have 5 bombers, and 5 targets to bomb. I select all of them, click on 1st target, then deselect 1 and click 4 of them to 2nd target. Repeat until you click the last bomber to last target.

[Soul]

Yea, about those custom AIs, the most updated is quite nice, not hard to beat though, probably what one would call medium or maybe in the corner of hard in blizz-standard.

I tried to link the crack some time ago, but its against the forum rule number 8.


About the lineformation in Spring vs the non-existent in the SC series, i personaly think that a line ins sc could be usefull, but i don't think it should be implimented, since sc2 is alot about nostalgy from sc1.
And line formation would disrupt some of that nostalgi.


I am supriesed that machete was allowed to post that link even if it is down about half the time... but w/e.