STARCRAFT 2 - BATTLE TANKS

[ArGoLi]

maybe with right mouse klick

[Paladon]

maybe with right mouse klick

A good idea.

(it's still in closed beta, right?)

It's not in any beta. If it's somewhere, it's in early pre-alpha.

1. Will it be possible to have more than 6 items? The buttons in the inventory suggest so

Do they? We (currently) wanted to keep the 6 items concept, but with maybe 2 extra slots for chargeable items.

2. I hope the written commands will still work, as it will be rather unfunny to always have to click the zoom out 10 times after game starts

Zooming in by clicking there sometimes is definitely faster than writing the command. You'll see. If it isn't, we can talk again about this. And i restricted the zoom to a min and max value, simply because people often don't know when their graphic card explodes.

3. i would not want dps to be shown in info screen

Why?

4. how would you provide a reason with votekick button? i hope the buttons are only optional alltogether

Interesting question, you could maybe choose from a list of valueable reasons.

5. dropping by double click kind of sucks - don't wanna know how often someone will just click on something because it's nearly ready (thing of powerpack nearly ready when you run from enemy and are nearly dead) - i doubt ppl will love it...

Next to the right-click suggestion, there's also another issue:

The items will not be useable by clicking on them in the inventory (which would be impossible scripting-wise since you cannot choose any target) but they are triggerable by using their corresponding button (or hotkey) in the skill menu to the right (where they're getting an own box).
Remember, SC2 doesn't offer inventory support currently and we are bound to what's scriptable, so the whole thing is just an imitation.

[frazse]

3. i would not want dps to be shown in info screen

dps is something that is missing in wc3 version tbh, so why not? :O

[AGGInator]

Zooming in by clicking there sometimes is definitely faster than writing the command. You'll see. If it isn't, we can talk again about this. And i restricted the zoom to a min and max value, simply because people often don't know when their graphic card explodes.

u think so? the most (who are able to) use makros or scripts to write the commands in a piece of a second

[Saiyuki]

Zooming in by clicking there sometimes is definitely faster than writing the command. You'll see. If it isn't, we can talk again about this. And i restricted the zoom to a min and max value, simply because people often don't know when their graphic card explodes.

u think so? the most (who are able to) use makros or scripts to write the commands in a piece of a second

are you sure, these makros/scripts will definetly work on the release date of sc2? if we left the button out and these are not possible/working, you would have to waste a couple of seconds to type the commands.

[ssl]

are you sure, these makros/scripts will definetly work on the release date of sc2?

I definitely think so because they just simulate the keystrokes.

[griffin1987]

1. I can write the commands before the game starts normally (think about bot hosted games), which is impossible with buttons in the interface (at least in wc3)
Also, it takes me split of a second to write the zoom command, while clicking the button multiple times probably takes more time - but I'm working in the IT Sector, so this may be specific to people who are using the keyboard the whole day... Still, if buttons wouldn't suck, why would there be hotkeys? I don't know of any pro bt gamer who's still clicking his skills / cp, they all use hotkeys on keyboard.

2. About max zoom level: From an IT perspective that reason is, well, I don't wanna hurt your feelings, but - there are people out there playing bt who will get DC with a zoom of 3000 already, just because their computer doesn't have the power to handle it. So restricting the zoom because of that is not really just / fair. I would approve if you'd said that it makes the game unfair in favor of those with a larger screen and stronger pc - but as always, why should I care for the people who ain't got enough money to buy a cheap system? And that's totally enough for wc3 as well as will be for sc2 - they just have to set textures, effects etc to low and be done with it. I don't think our job is to keep people from doing dumb stuff - if they do, they shouldn't be playing bt.

May you virtually hang me for my evil comments...

3. If you start showing DPS, games will get a lot more boring, because people who are not so good in the game will see that their enemy has more dps and just camp at their factories. Also it would narrow down the space between good and not so good players - yes I'm totally for helping newbies with the game, but it's a difference if we're talking about first time players, and ppl who play the game just the 20th time - after playing bt some thousand times already i can pretty much guess how much dps my enemy has, and I wouldn't want ppl who have only recently started to have the same advantage. That would totally make the game more boring, as it would narrow down the differences between the players and make some playstyles, like "short range-aggressive", utterly useless.

4. Didn't know about inventory - nice job in that case.

5. How are you developing for SC2 if you don't have access to it? O_O Is the map editor out already?

Cheers

[AGGInator]

And that's totally enough for wc3 as well as will be for sc2 - they just have to set textures, effects etc to low and be done with it.

hm.. in my experience and with my system it doesn't matter how i set the detail and graphics level.. the fps are nearly the same...
its wc3 that sucks with coding i think becaus in crysis for example i have more fps at highest settings then at wc3.
(especially with ati gpu's i think)
so i only want to say that it isn't the pc of the bt players that sucks everytime.

yes I'm totally for helping newbies with the game...

youre sure bout that??

[frazse]

5. How are you developing for SC2 if you don't have access to it? O_O Is the map editor out already?

you can still use the map editor and test the maps (singleplayer only :<)

[Paladon]

Well, i remade some parts of our own UI. That actually means:

- The UI is not affected in a negative way by the individual resolution of a player anymore (used a technique like the one the default UI is using).
- The unit status/inventory/etc informations are not green anymore, so the screenshots are outdated but a wonderful presentation how all these issues and images are just work-in-progress steps.

Other things will be announced later.

Edit: Nearly forgot, you can also zoom in and out by klicking on a specified key on your keyboard (i currently assigned F1 and F2).

[frazse]

nice

[griffin1987]

BTW.: Is SC2 also limited to 12 players? I wouldn't mind if there were a 3 or 4 way bt map (probably with a bigger map) with more players, or a 2 way map with 10 ppl in each team...

And: Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for extending the afkai command?

1. You could add a second type flag, like -afkai aggressive or -afkai defensive (-afkaia / -afkaid)
2. We could maybe do a community driven bot scripting - i doubt i'm the only one here with a bit of scripting experience, and with the amount of leavers it wouldn't be bad if there were a decent ai
You would just have to post a small summary of the functions the bot would be able to use (i guess you wrote functions for things like dps etc) and optionally the current bot code, and then everyone who wants to would post his "optimized" bot script, and this way you could kinda let us do the work....

Just something which just came to my mind...

Edit: Something else which just came to my mind: Will SC2 have the same type of weapon system which gives weapons with a higher cooldown an advantage? (Short explanation: weapon with 2 sec cd does 100% instantly, while weapon with 1 sec cd and same dps needs to fire 2 times = it does the same damage after 1 second, and wep with 0.1 sec cd and same dps needs 1.9 secs for the same dmg) Also as far as i get it, you have to be in the range of a weapon the whole time at the moment to be selected as a possible target, while i think it should be enough to be in range in the moment the weapon fires (if i'm wrong, correct me, but that's the feeling i get from weapons like an energy torpedo).

BTW2: Does SC2 use the same JASS as WC3?

[Paladon]

BTW.: Is SC2 also limited to 12 players? I wouldn't mind if there were a 3 or 4 way bt map (probably with a bigger map) with more players, or a 2 way map with 10 ppl in each team...

It will be 5v5 for now.

And: Wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity for extending the afkai command?

For now, we have other things to handle, before we even think of scripting the AI. Sorry.

Edit: Something else which just came to my mind: Will SC2 have the same type of weapon system which gives weapons with a higher cooldown an advantage? (Short explanation: weapon with 2 sec cd does 100% instantly, while weapon with 1 sec cd and same dps needs to fire 2 times = it does the same damage after 1 second, and wep with 0.1 sec cd and same dps needs 1.9 secs for the same dmg) Also as far as i get it, you have to be in the range of a weapon the whole time at the moment to be selected as a possible target, while i think it should be enough to be in range in the moment the weapon fires (if i'm wrong, correct me, but that's the feeling i get from weapons like an energy torpedo).

1) In Warcraft 3, you do not have to be the in the range the whole time.
2) In Sc2, probably the same. It's not that easy to imitate auto firing weapons in Sc2 like it's in Wc3.

BTW2: Does SC2 use the same JASS as WC3?

No, it's using "Galaxy", which is not object-orientated (vJass is).

[StendekX]

Have faith. They WILL work.

[Exodus]

Edit: Something else which just came to my mind: Will SC2 have the same type of weapon system which gives weapons with a higher cooldown an advantage? (Short explanation: weapon with 2 sec cd does 100% instantly, while weapon with 1 sec cd and same dps needs to fire 2 times = it does the same damage after 1 second, and wep with 0.1 sec cd and same dps needs 1.9 secs for the same dmg) Also as far as i get it, you have to be in the range of a weapon the whole time at the moment to be selected as a possible target, while i think it should be enough to be in range in the moment the weapon fires (if i'm wrong, correct me, but that's the feeling i get from weapons like an energy torpedo).

1) In Warcraft 3, you do not have to be the in the range the whole time.
2) In Sc2, probably the same. It's not that easy to imitate auto firing weapons in Sc2 like it's in Wc3.

That's not completely true. In Wc3 the weapon cooldown starts the moment you come into range of your first target. This means, that high cooldown weapons have the disadvantage, that they need to stay longer near their opponents to get their first shot fired off.
In Sc2 it's not working this way anymore. A periodic effect is executed, and when a unit enters just a moment before this is the case, your high cooldown weapon just might instantly fire on the target.

BTW2: Does SC2 use the same JASS as WC3?

No, it's using "Galaxy", which is not object-orientated (Jass is).

That's not true either Neither the new Galaxy language, nor Jass are object orientated. There were some additions to the Jass language, to introduce oo-like features, which was called vJass. This same is already happening for Galaxy, they called the "new" language Andromeda.

This means of course, that every bit of code has to be rewritten, including the AI code. That's why there will be no AI for a pretty long time I guess, since we have to focus on getting a playable high-quality map first.

[Paladon]

Sorry, i wanted to write "(vJass is)" in my last post at the end which is the addition i am using for Wc3 BT.

Thanks for the correction, i'm not an expert of scripting languages.

[theoneitw]

k~ dear bt's friends.
please understand me that cannot well english^^;;;
i suggest an important thing.
A most of asian dont know english. Many gamers cant read well english^^
Some people sometimes leave at room, they dont want to play in english game. and they enjoy battleships-_-;;
i think..(we think.. to bt gamers of asia server) the best important problem of asia server is language-problem.
we tried to gather asia-gamers to various ways, but we failed it.
If asian-language(ex. korean, japaneses) shows to a game that many asia-gamers will join to btanks-games.
If you can do it to star2 that we can give you the translate-source and any-helping for btank of star2.
we be waiting other-server user's opinions, and plz consider our suggestion for btank of star2.

[Saiyuki]

hi theoneitw, quite a problematic situation. but we may find a solution for it.

as far as i know, it seems as if sc2 is able to change object data ( e.g. names and values ) while playing. as such, if we have different language configurations of the object data ready and a way to find out the language of sc2 you're currently playing, we could change it while the game is starting.
but this feature isn't currently panned, mostly because we have no translator in the devteam who could do these translations ( all the time ), so i currently don't expect us to start implementing any routines on this.

but we will -pretty sure- redo a wiki for bt on sc2, which would provide you a chance to understand how bt will work again. we may even provide some moderator positions then, who could then translate some sites ( as new ones ) to their respective language. bt would still be in english, but you would have the option to understand the mechanics, skills and so on in your language and while remembering them then to play the english version.

[Exodus]

Since the support of multilingual maps is way better in Sc2, it shouldnt be that hard, to provide the map in several languages.

You could already observe the (buggy) support of several languages for one map in the beta: if you were playing a map with a different Starcraft client, than the map was made with, you couldn't see any strings (only ParamValue21323 or something). This was the case, because the game tried to show you all the strings, matching the language you client was using. But this failed in the beta, when there were no string tables for your own language. When this is (hopefully) fixed in the final version of Starcraft, it should be quite easy, to implement several languages into one map.

[Paladon]

The User Interface generally is finished.

This actually means, the developement is going to focus on the specific tanks and units now.