They should spend less time making screenshots/interviews, and get the damn beta out.

Juicy interview.

What I think would greatly help SC2 would be if they had some kind of GTV/HLTV with added shoutcast support built into Battlenet. Unfortunately, they avoided that question and they seem to be gearing the game away from a spectator event. For example making the different units, colors and even races much harder to distinguish, especially while watching on a TV from a couple of meters away.

In Quake, you can just sit back and watch a demo/spec the match, but watching a match in SC requires constant input from the user to move the camera around. Streams will always be far better for SC.

definitely - and fp doesn't really help much either imho since almost all the pros focus on their macro rather than microing big battles and sometimes miss drops or dt rapes or stuff like that or just realize what happened when its too late - that wouldn't be a lot of fun to watch casually because its way too hard to figure out what's going on and also you're stuck with the pov of just one player. also remember the pre-multiview era with gtv or the crappy osp ctf or ra3 matches where you were stuck with whichever pov the admin with the camera was most interested in (when he wasn't afk)

a managed pov would work best - with commentary
but then it'd be almost the same as a stream and with livestream.com, ustream, justintv etc around streams are already on the rise and becoming cheap and accessible for everyone
more plus-points include that you don't need to have the game installed on the particular box you're on at this moment which is also really good for people who don't have a proper machine to run the game
it might be harder to follow on a stream opposed to ingame gfx because of the lower resolution, high compression and possibly lowered framerate but like i said: streams are getting cheaper and it won't be too long until 720p streams are a viable option (give it maybe 2 or 3 years since we're talking about this as a long-term thing with the game "hopefully" being played for at least 5+ years which i personally doubt but i don't think that matters here...) - check the roffles stream (OSL, MSL and proleague pretty much daily) on livestream.com to give you a hint of how good the quality of a free stream can be (**edit** when he's not streaming stupid kpop)

sure something like gtv would be a nice addition but its not a make-or-break thing like with q3 imho

but then it'd be almost the same as a stream and with livestream.com, ustream, justintv etc around streams are already on the rise and becoming cheap and accessible for everyone

What I envision is that your account can be promoted to Broadcaster on the new Battlenet. If you have that status, you can schedule and show GTV games with commentary.

Which means that when a user logon to Battle.net, you see all currently active and scheduled broadcasted games. It may be anything from minor online tournaments to the Blizzcon finals.

Once its active, you just dclick and you straight away get thrown into the game with voice commentary and start following by default the user who the broadcaster set to Observer at the start of the game. Of course, you should also be allowed to switch to either free cam or following one of the players. While watching the game you can of course chat with the other spectators (which you can turn off).

That's how I envision it and I think it would be quite the success as the accessability is so high.

Well, the OGN main stream is already quite acceptable quality, and GOM was nice, too. Livestream is certainly viable, it's just that we need reliable casts, and a universal ban on *pop.

Gee gee gee gee,
Baby, baby.

In Quake, you can just sit back and watch a demo/spec the match, but watching a match in SC requires constant input from the user to move the camera around. Streams will always be far better for SC.

Just allow you to either follow no one, a player, a shoutcaster or an observer, it's hardly a problem.

Follow none (you control cam): too much effort. Only useful when watching a demo for trying to specifically learn timing/builds.

Follow player: first person isn't suitable for spectating at all, and still only moderately useful for educational purposes.

Follow shoutcaster/observer: isn't this a bit much for them to work on when the current system is so easy? I'd much rather have development time on balance.

Follow shoutcaster/observer: isn't this a bit much for them to work on when the current system is so easy? I'd much rather have development time on balance.

If anything, it is easier to implement follow observer than to follow a player. It would hardly take any effort at all to make someone follow an observer.

Besides, game designers work on balance, programmers on features, so one does not outrule the other.

I agree, hltv for CS is extremely popular and something similar but improved would work well for SC2.

Both are useless, though. =P

how is following observer easier to implement? its a humungeos amount of data

i doubt it'd make any difference to implement fp or observer (basically it should be the same thing - just one more set of data stating viewpoint position on the map, zoom (afaik sc2 has a variable zoom) and mouse position

yeah i was talking about the amount of data as opposed to the way gamedata is handled atm.

because the only thing that gets transmitted in games atm are actions. implementing a fp view is also very much.

Well, they've already said that first-person view is in SC2, and should also be in a replay file.

in that case the follow spec thing is maybe in automatically, considering the specs are being treated as players, and the observers/replay viewers can just choose which pov to use.

how is following observer easier to implement?

Cause it only needs to follow view point (and possibly selection) while following a player you need to follow both the point of view and all the actions. Unless you have some kind of gimmick first person view that doesn't allow you to follow the point of view (as in some SC1 mods) but I seem to recall that following a view point is already implemented, so it's a mute point.

yes, but actions are time-discrete, whereas following a viewpoint(and mouse-movement) is a semi-continuous process, making it way harder to achieve in something that needs to be transmitted pretty quickly.

im drunk, i hope you know what i mean.

even the fastest player only gets maybe 500 apm, which can easily written in a txt document with timestamps with milisecond resolution without making the document really huge.

following mouse movement will make for rather large amounts of data.

There is no need to follow mouse movement of an observer. You only need to know where his cam is position (which is a position of a couple of digits that changes every few seconds, much less than the APM of a player) and his clicks (which happens even more rarely).

have fun watching dia show.. that's not going to work

Even if the coordinates would change 5 times per second (which is highly unrealistic if you've watched any SC game) that's less than 1KB/s.

Funny how you claim its a dia show and that it isn't going to work when it's already implemented. GG.

i think what he's trying to say is that a "normal" mouse runs at 125Hz USB rate which means 125 snapshots per second while it comes down to how the netcode works - if its 30 snapshots (like in q3) it'd mean every ~4th mouseposition (in x & y relative on the screen) is captured and delivered to a spectator - would this feel laggy?
also i wonder what aspect ratios the game supports - i doubt this would work easily if the obs is on 4:3 and the viewer on 16:10 and clicks something far north - would the user with widescreen be able to see that? or otherwise if the obs is on widescreen and clicks sth far east or west - would a 4:3 user see that (because obviously one has more "fov" than the other thanks to aspectratio)?

As I said, there is no reason to follow the mouse, only the clicks.

Uhh, according to Blizzard, first person mode in a replay/spec is exactly that. You can see all the clicks on the screen he makes (with little marks that he doesn't see), the screen follows, and you see what exactly he has selected. The only thing it's lacking is you seeing his mouse directly.

yes, but those are his actions, right?

following a screen moving around is something else imo, and if you want to make the viewing experience smooth, you can't just update the "observer-cam's" position every few seconds, like paladia is suggesting.

and come to think of it i might be wrong. without mousemovement. updating a screen's position maybe at 20hz might be enough. it's obviously a bit more than a player's apm. but not that drastic.

It follows exactly where his screen is if you go to first person mode, but you can still watch it the old way like in SC if you want.

Bliz could easily write something to automate the process well enough to cope.

I would like to see some sort of split screen setup and possibly a tree view that showed unit interaction and could be easily clicked/numbered to "jump to" quickly. It would not be 100% but neither are casts.

Different situations could be given different weights which would then effect what is shown in a different view. Weights could possibly be given by users as strats emerge. Units X Y and Z approaching within a few screens of their opponent would trigger something, they would be followed rather than the builder units.

On top of that you could also have short "flash backs" and replay sections of the game that have just elapsed but somehow got missed.

This would not take away from balance development time because bliz can get an entire separate team on to take care of it.

Good camera work for the replay would be almost impossible to automate, the Proleague view guys really know their stuff, switching to workers and buildings at just the right times to show you tech choices and cheeses that the computer would never figure out.

"switching to workers and buildings at just the right times to show you tech choices"

A computer could not show tech choices?

What. This would probably be one of the easiest things to show.

I am not suggesting a replacement for casts, but an alternative beyond manual camera operation.

It can't preempt them effectively as a good camera man can, only show things after the fact.

You want the cameraman to go and look at an area before something is built to see the builder units walk there and build it?

Ok then.

SC sounds exciting.

you can simplify every game by stupiding them down, quake, cs, wow, anything. doesn't make starcraft less awesome.

check any gom/proleague vod, the cameramen are usually old professionals, they know where to look at what time better than anyone else, and they do an excellent job.

It's important to see the peon unit moving to build something to get what kind of timing is being used. You can't use a general rule for this kind of thing because builds are different from race to race, map to map, and change with trends.

You obviously have no idea about SC then, it is exciting. An early worker could be proxy, it could be harassment, it could be something crazy like a super-early hidden expo, by showing what a player's doing you're anticipating what's to come which makes it more exciting. Code would have a hard time telling what's significant, the camera men usually know when a manner pylon is coming or likely, the code would have a real struggle working that out. There are too many issues with automation.

Or just watch a cast?

interesting interview, would like to read something similar with sync

do it or ask dird to do it and post funny music videos (altho in english that probably would miss the point a bit)

well i could try to do that actually, but in the past syncerror ignored what i wrote to him so i kinda doubt that it will work out...

1 or 0? \:D/

So what did blizzard decide on that automine situation? Or is it as of yet undecided?

BR4 showcased more expansions than the previous three.

Automine+MBS are here to stay.

: (

Browder makes me nervous.