StarCraft 2 Articles
WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 2
1st Jul 2008 07:59 PM GMT | Leord | 0 comments
Coverage WWI 2008 >> WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 2 >> Part 1
WWI 2008 StarCraft RTS Fansite Event Part 2
This article is the second one about the Fansite Event at WWI 2008 in Paris. If you haven't read the first article, that's recommended to do, but most questions are completely fine to read on their own and it isn't required reading to understand the context of this second half.
Karune continues to explain the current game design in the excruciating details that StarCraft fans love to read.
In this second part we discuss:
- Release date.
- StarCraft 2 Beta.
- Blizzard Forum Chaos.
- Hacking in StarCraft.
- Diablo 3 Development.
- Blizzard Releasing Info.
- The StarCraft II 3D Engine.
- The Marauder.
- The Jackal.
- Zerg Creep.
- The Ability "Ensnare".
- Map Editor.
- Dark Templar Influences.
- Psionic Storm Artwork.
- The Mighty Carrier
In the first part of the discussion touched subjects such as Hive Queen changes, resource management, single player, StarCraft broadcasts, infestation and community responses among many other things.
The Questions
When is StarCraft II Done?
As was not really surprising, Karune did not have a clue ("I honestly don't have a clue"), but he discussed a bit on how the actual game development progress worked. Right now they have started to work more on Single Player [Editor's note: Rob Pardo said in an interview that the Single Player campaign is about 1/3 done.], so that will make it easier to say how close they are when done with that. As we know Blizzard have taken the stance to really perfect the Multiplayer aspect of the game before doing anything else, it would probably be an indication that they are nearing the end of the production cycle as they are putting energy into Single Player now.
Dustin Browder said to me, other fansites and other press at BlizzCon 2007 that the game was about 50% done at the time, and he hinted at that the progress have accelerated over time, so it doesn't have to take another 4 years before launch - obviously!
As for the current progress, Karune mentioned that as soon as new stuff are added to the game, a whole new array of work is needed, and in essence, they are almost taking a step back in progress. What he probably means is that as new things are added to the game, the whole project becomes that little more "broader", and the relative progress on the new scale might be smaller. They would naturally not loose progress per se when adding units, just adding more required work to the total.
Even races that were basically done, like the Terrans that Karune thought started to take a solid shape, has still received improvements as of late. They got more polygons, and new textures - a lot of the work is in the details, both in terms of graphics as well as gameplay. The Blizzard dev team are even adding new units on the board at this stage, and making significant changes to other units. An example is a new Protoss Pylon they have been toying with, a Dark Pylon, that doesn't give energy, but instead cloaks all the units around it. As it reveals Phase Cannons when they shoot, it is useful mainly to hide tech buildings. It wasn't added to the WWI build, and Karune did not know if it will appear in the game.
On the whole, there really is no answer to when the game is done.
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