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Loomings: Part One This is fun for me. While my first experience with this game was trying it on my friend’s computer right when it came out and us struggling to beat Terran 3, it would be a while before I would get it for myself. Instead, I contented myself with the demo, which I got on a demo disc from either Computer Gaming World or PC Gamer. The focal point of the demo was the campaign, which was an entirely unique set of missions that weren’t in the full game, serving as a prologue of sorts. It also came with battle.net functionality – there was only one map (Challenger), it was a two-player map, and the only race allowed was Terran, but you did have access to the full tech tree and could go head-to-head against other demo players, which was a big deal for 98. Long-time readers may remember that towards the beginning of the thread, I’d mentioned that I’d considered opening with this campaign rather than the main game. I eventually decided against it because a) Episode 1 provides a smoother curve for introducing and breaking down units and gameplay mechanics, and b) that’d be a whole lot of training wheel-y Terran missions in a row. But I still really wanted to show it off, so I’m glad we’re doing this. I'm playing this as a custom campaign through StarCraft Remastered, partially because it’s a pain to get running on modern systems and partially because the demo had some limitations I’d rather not deal with. They kinda had to slash and burn a bit to get it to get the filesize to something that could be reasonably downloaded by people with 90s dialup, so the graphics are blurrier and unit lines have been cut (not from the mission dialogue itself, which is surprisingly fully voice acted, but many unit selection/response lines are omitted). It also means I miss out on a couple of things, which I've instead grabbed from YouTube. This intro text is one of them: %20StarCraft%20Demo%20Precursor%20-%20Tutorial%20Boot%20Camp%20-%20Terran%20Prequel%20Loomings%20Campaign%20-%20YouTube%20-%200-1-22.jpeg) Note that for those who haven't played it, this is what all intermission text looked like in the original StarCraft, rather than the illustrated bits we get in Remastered. Mission One: Strongarm %20StarCraft%20Demo%20Precursor%20-%201.%20Strongarm%20-%20Terran%20Prequel%20Loomings%20Campaign%20-%20YouTube%20-%200-0-00.jpeg) Our splash screen. Note the use of a time stamp, which would be absent come the game proper (aside from the occasional “One hour later,” etc). My guess is they decided ambiguity on whether the events of a campaign are happening over the course of days, weeks, or months would help to avoid the creation of accidental plot holes.  Adjutant online. We have entered into low orbit over Chau Sara and are preparing to descend to the planet. Receiving incoming transmission… Lieutenant… Damir Suran? Am I reading that right? Samir Duran. Right. Well, it appears you've arrived just in time. As you know, the renegades who call themselves the Sons of Korhal have been working for months to undermine Confederate authority in the fringe colonies. Well, they're on Chau Sara now, and I'd like to take care of them without involving the local militia. That's where your Alpha Squadron boys come in. There are to be no arrests, Lieutenant. I hope you understand what I mean. I want this problem solved once and for all. Good hunting.Mission Objectives: Destroy the rebel base. Since he doesn't introduce himself, I'll point out that that's Magistrate Collins, and his not-so-subtle “Come on, man, don't be lame. War crimes are cool” attitude shows us that the Terran Confederacy has kind of been conceived of as Just The Worst from the beginning. Also, while he's using the Battlecruiser portrait, he doesn't sound like the Battlecruiser. Yep, as mentioned, the demo campaign here is fully voice acted. Collins is sporting a… I don't know American accents well enough. Carolina accent? Georgian accent (the state not the country)? …Appalachian? Something southern, at any rate. Here's our start:  Complete with a tip on unit selection. But you know what? Let's change things up a bit. This is the demo, after all.   There we go. Yep, where Remastered is a pixel-for-pixel mirror of the original, you can swap out the graphics at any point just by pushing F5, like in the Monkey Island remakes. We'll be doing this in the original graphics. That does mean black bars on the side of the screen, but it's only for a couple updates. Our initial setup is pretty secure. It looks pretty similar to Terran 3 where we've got plenty of high ground surrounding some tight choke points:    That third screenshot is me going to build a Bunker at one, only to notice too late that we can't actually get them. Fortunately…  We can get an Academy, and as you can see we've already got an Engineering Bay, so we've got plenty of options for infantry upgrades. So, Lieutenant Suran – Duran. That’s what I said. How are you finding Chau Sara so far? This your first time here? Quite accommodating, thank you. Yes, I regret that my work has never brought me out this way before. That’s why I specifically requested this assignment, in fact – I wanted to see Chau Sara for myself. Is that so? Normally you soft, hub-world military types can’t wait to leave. Yes, well, I have special reason to believe that Chau Sara will soon become a world of great importance. Now that’s what I like to hear! Glad to see all my proposals to the Families finally paid off. What tipped the scales? Is it our special Rad Brand Hot Sauce? The secret is, we actually irradiate the peppers before putting them in. No, I expect it will have more to do with the… local culture. Local Culture, huh? Never tried their hot sauce before. Well, maybe after this you can join the boys and I to check it out, Damir. Do you mind if I call you Damir, Lieutenant? Actually, I would prefer Samir. Great. I’m looking forward to it, Damir.We quickly assemble a force:  And the Sons of Korhal hit us with an early probing attack:    We quickly assemble an attack force:  Marines and Firebats are the only units we have access to here, so that's what we're going with. Also, as an aside, while I generally like the graphic improvements made by the Remastered, I kinda think the original Firebat looks better. Something about the boxiness of the fuel pack and the cartoon-ness of the contrast between colours. Though the Remastered ones look pretty badass, too… As we go to move out…  Permission to speak freely, sir? I'm not sure you know what you're doing. If you're going to send us into hostile territory and you want us to defend ourselves, use the ATTACK command. If you want us to ignore enemy fire and go directly to the spot you've targeted, use the MOVE command. Now which’ll it be?Fun fact: Had we played the tutorial mission in the Terran campaign, we also would have heard this message. I think Attack-Moving has been functional from the beginning? Orcs and Humans is janky enough that it's a little hard to say, but as far as I can tell it works there, and it definitely works in Warcraft 2. But this is the first time they've ever signposted it this clearly. It's also interesting because non-diegetic messages like this are mostly limited to tooltips, I think this is the only time we've seen one in spoken dialogue. Actually I guess if you squint at it, you could maybe imagine that “Attack” and “Move” are actual in-universe military doctrines.      Oof. Four Firebats at the top of a ramp is not safe for Marines. We took more losses there than I expected. Still, we're in good shape. Onward.   But as we head down that ramp…   Sir! We've got incoming, and I'll be damned if I can identify ‘em! And so it begins. Whatever they are, you must destroy them, Lieutenant! That is a direct order!   Having sent everyone out on the attack, all we have left in the base is our Marines that were hanging out on the high ground. This isn't good. But then…   Recon Squad Cerberus reporting. We're here to oversee the extermination of these xenomorphs and contain the spread of any hostile infestation on this colony. Why wasn't I informed of this? Confederate Command never consulted - We have our own orders, magistrate. We don't answer to you. I suggest we get on with this mission. Well, right now my new friend Lieutenant Damir Suran has the command. Any orders will have to go through him. Very well. Lieutenant Suran - It’s Duran. Do not interrupt me, Lieutenant. Carry on as normal. You will need to deal with these insurgents before we can address the xenomorphs. My men will secure your perimeter in case of additional incursion. Yes, commander. Oh, and Suran? …yes, commander? Be swift and thorough. Time is not on our side.Our new friend there is the mysterious commander of the Cerberus Squad, who is never named either in game or in external materials. Like Collins, he takes a standard unit picture but his voice is very different. Rather than the Science Vessel’s Mr. Burns impression, the commander’s voice is flat, authoritative, and menacing. Kind of your typical “sci-fi government spook” delivery. But he sent along a nice squad of troops here, that will allow us to hold off the  Although…   Some Firebats just finished and they're handling things pretty well on their own.    Still, our Cerberus boys are pretty helpful. Let's take a look at them.    Yeah those are some scary units. They're the hero versions of these units, Alan Schezar and Gui Montag, they've just been renamed to something generic so it makes sense that there's more than one of them. They kick rear end, but we'll be seeing a lot more of them and our army's already most of the way to the enemy base, so…   There they are. The Sons of Korhal. More importantly, the Sons of Korhal before they brought on people like Matt and Duke to serve as tactical advisors. This should be easy.        And it is! Commander, the Sons of Korhal have been neutralized. Excellent. We will convene in half an hour. Do not be late, Suran. Mission Two: The Gauntlet %20StarCraft%20Demo%20Precursor%20-%202.%20The%20Gauntlet%20-%20Terran%20Prequel%20Loomings%20Campaign%20-%20YouTube%20-%200-0-00.jpeg) Receiving incoming transmission. Greetings again, Lieutenant. I know you're anxious for some answers about those creatures. We had quarantined a number of these creatures for study, but shortly after our science crews began their experiments all communication with the Flannum Installation was lost. The installation has been compromised, and preliminary scanner sweeps indicate the area is crawling with hostiles. My Cerberus unit will handle the situation inside, but we require Alpha Squadron's assistance getting there. Any other information is on a strict need-to-know basis.Mission Objectives: Bring two Cerberus Firebats to the installation entrance. Huh. Well, we definitely seem to have gotten ourselves in a “even if we succeed we'll be getting a silenced pistol to the back of the head for knowing too much” situation, but not much we can do about it now. Here's our start:  Our Cerberus boys are still here!  We can take cover in these bunkers if things get too dicey.Another line that would be brought over word for word to the main campaign, where it would appear in Terran 03. No salty Vulture to chew us out here, though. Although, I'm actually not sure on the timeline. Come to think of it, looking at the release dates and the general thrust of the writing, it seems more likely that the demo campaign was made after the main campaign, so I guess it's lines from that being brought here.  We also get the obligatory tooltip telling us how to load units in the bunkers. We put some Marines in for now. Those Cerberus Firebats are way too good to be on bunker duty. Our destination, PS:  It's opposite from us. We've got a ways to go to reach it. Fortunately, to make that easier we get some new toys this mission:  Our first scanner sweeps reveals…  The bridge leading to our base. Nothing exciting, but I have kinda missed the Badlands tileset and its decrepit roadways. We also get access to Turrets this mission. I put a line of them on the ridge above our base:   They spot some burrowed Zerg:  Oh well. They're not harming anyone. And finally…  Yes! Wait, no. No. That's not good. Do you see what I see? Or more importantly, what I don't see? No Machine Shop. Vultures without upgrades are, uh, not spectacular.  We get some anyway, because they're our New Unit for the mission. You know, playing this campaign again has really unlocked the “Simple StarCraft” part of my brain that doesn't think about whether Vultures are good against Hydras and just says “Alright, the bike-y guys are shooting grenades at the spit-y guys! Rad!” It really takes me back to seeing these units for the first time without any broader concepts like “meta” or “damage types” or “efficiency.” Our hoverbike dudes are going exploring. Unupgraded Vultures always feel slower than you'd expect - I guess where they're hovering units they have to deal with acceleration time before they can reach top speed.  Oops. Well, we see something, at least. Scanning…  …shows us a full base there. And…  …that beyond the base is the path onward. Guess we'll have to go through it. Interesting. I don’t believe I’ve seen the pulsing ground before. I don’t think anyone has, Damir. Now burn it to the ground, Lieutenant!         We bring Team Cerberus along this time, and man, they're extremely strong. We cross the bridge and continue, clearing out a couple of burrowed Zerg along the way. We eventually come to…  A third bridge! N.B. As far as I can tell, this bridge is supposed to spark a message from one of your Cerberus Goliaths, who advises you to bring along an SCV for field repairs. I couldn't manage to get it to trigger, though; not sure if it has additional criteria I missed or if it just didn't survive the translation from demo to custom campaign. Here it is, if anyone's curious:  Lieutenant, I recommend bringing along an SCV for emergency repairs.  Further on…      …we slaughter our way through some Zerg. Our Vultures go on ahead to battle some Hydras:       Vultures are… not great against Hydras. I mean, they can be, if controlled well, but that requires Vulture upgrades, which we don't have here. But remember the golden rule of strategy games: any army composition can defeat any other army composition so long as you are sufficiently outproducing your opponent. Also a word on the Zerg here: they're purple. Purple is the Steve colour, but we did see it a bit before Steve, as well. Twice, in fact: purple was the colour of the Zerglings in the Jacobs Installation in Terran 04 as well as the Zerg we were trying to protect in Terran 09. What does this mean? Honestly, probably nothing. Purple is kind of the “iconic colour” for Zerg the way blue is with Terran, yellow is with Protoss, Red is with Orcs, blue again is for Humans, etc. BUT! What if pre-Steve purple is the colour used for Zerg under the influence of Terrans, as that's where we see it both times. Am I reading too much into a colour choice, or are these Zerg ones that up until recently were under the control of Terrans? (The answer, if you're wondering, is probably both; these Zerg are almost certainly Confederate test subjects run amok, hence Cerberus unit magically being right on hand when they appear, but that doesn't mean there’s any validity to my tinfoil hat theories about the meaning of their colour). Anyway. With that done…   Sir, the team has reached the installation. You watch things out here. We'll take care of things inside. We make it to the Flannum Installation. Also note that despite the insistence of both the Cerberus Commander and the Firebat that they'll handle this without else, we will, in fact, be taking command of the mission inside. Good thing, too. It's a blast. Mission Three: Belly of the Beast %20StarCraft%20Demo%20Precursor%20-%203.%20Den%20of%20the%20Beast%20-%20Terran%20Prequel%20Loomings%20Campaign%20-%20YouTube%20-%200-0-01.jpeg) The YouTube playthrough I'm grabbing these splash screens from looks like it ran into the colouring glitch that can often happen when you try to run original StarCraft on more modern operating systems, such as Windows 11. Or 10. Or 8. Or 7. Or Vista. I'll add in a proper one when I get home but for now I'm enjoying the nostalgia of this. EDIT: Okay, here's a kinda-sorta-better one:  Starcraft - Original Demo Campaign - YouTube - 0-7-30(1).jpeg) Lieutenant, we have accessed the installation’s primary bio-scanners and have ascertained that there are still a number of Confederate scientists inside. What? I'm the only one with the installation’s access codes! How did you override my security clearance? I told you before, Magistrate, we don't answer to you. We are to infiltrate the installation and evacuate any remaining Confederate personnel. So, I’m to be on the inside after all? To an extent. We’ve judged that your tactical expertise may be of use in this operation. You will remain outside, but we are providing an interface that will allow you to see what our team sees so you may advise them. Do not fail us, Suran. I’ve told you my name! It’s Duran! Duran!(Oh, don’t roll your eyes at me, you all knew this was coming) Do not question me, Lieutenant. Now let's move, gentlemen. We're on a tight schedule.Mission Objectives: Locate the civilians. Bring at least one civilian back to the entrance. Here we are, on the inside:  Oh hell yes. I think I mentioned this way back in the Firebat spotlight, but this is a great mission. It's two hero Firebats against a map full of Zerglings and man is it fun. Oh, by the way…  We never showed off their armour before. 3. That's a 60% damage reduction against Zerglings. Speaking of…   It's beautiful. Zerglings barely last a second. We come to…  …a door. It opens automatically, giving us…   Security cameras activated. Sir, we've located the scientists. Very good. Now to reach them. Watch your backs; this place must be crawling with xenomorphs.Also…  An interesting quirk is that the Beacons disappear once you use them. I don't believe that ever happens in any of the main campaign missions. I wonder if it was a QoL feature to make it easier to know where you've been, and then maybe with testing they found that having them remain to serve as landmarks was more helpful. Who knows? Here's a fun thing:  The game is spawning Zerglings beside that hole, giving the illusion that they've clawed through the wall.  Not that it does them any good, mind you. But it's neat. Let's go back out the door and down that hallway:    Ah. It never gets old. …except it does. So I'm not going to showcase every single skirmish. Just know that every few steps we're getting ambushed by Zerglings and they're immediately getting roasted. We come to…  Another door. And this one's got some Marines behind it. And they're Blue, which means they're probably friendly. Sadly, the door is locked. We can't get at them. Don't wander too far, though, because… Hey, they must be the rescue unit! Open the door.  The security system’s all outta whack. Be careful, boys. True to their word…     Boo, the one floor trap got a Marine with its very last shot. Oh well.   Huh. We don't know where or what that is, but it's neat that we have access to it. I guess.  Ambush! And it's the mysterious Brown Zerg this time. In the main Terran campaign, the majority of the Zerg we fought were Orange. We're also facing off a fair bit against Orange here. This makes sense, because Orange is the ill-fated Zasz’s brood, and Zasz's brood is/was kind of the recon wing of the Swarm. No idea what Brown's deal is or what they're up to. Moving on…    More turrets!       Looks like there's some Hydras here, too.  Or were, rather. Here…  We're going back to a door I ignored earlier because ???   There's a lone Marine hiding in the corner.  Uh… heh, room secured, sir!Back out in the open area…   Ah. This would be the room we unlocked earlier.      Looks like we're reaching the site of the main battle.   Heh, check that out. They're trapped.This actually isn't from Zerg 05 but rather originates here and will be repeated in a Brood War mission. (By the way, when I point these things out, it's not to be critical. Of course a demo is going to reuse dialogue if it can. I just think it's neat).  Like in Zerg 05, the trapped Zerglings get unleashed on their Terran tormenters. Unlike Zerg 05…       …they're up against two Cerberus Firebats. Nothing much else going on here, so we go to the end of the hallway, finding…  …A door.    Wall trap. Up the stairs…  …a locked door.  And another locked door. But we can see a civilian behind it!   Wait! Don't open the doors yet! So… if you were wondering how a bunch of unarmed civilians survived the facility being overrun, the answer it “by locking themselves in.” Which we just undid. Whoops. We rush to get them to safety.      Yeah. You go, Cerberus Firebat.  You'll note rescued six Civilians. We only need to rescue one of them, so some casualties don't matter. Particularly sadistic players can use them as scouts. You'll note one of them is a different colour: this has no impact on gameplay whatsoever. Maybe at one point that had to be the one you rescued, then that was changed? But as it stands he's just the same as the others, only with a different outfit. Maybe he's the shift supervisor or something. Civilians, if you're wondering, have 40 HP, 0 armour, no attack, and 4 speed. How is a defenseless civilian just as durable as a Marine in power armour?  Zerg keep coming to ambush us, PS - including from directions we've already been. I'm assuming the map spawns them in. Heading further along, we find…     Let's go!More Marines. Neat. Nothing really respawns, so…    …It's an uneventful walk back to the entrance. Commander, the civilians have all been rescued and should be departing the facility momentarily. Excellent work, lieutenant Suran. In light of this success, I will overlook your earlier outburst. The scientists will need to be debriefed. I will notify you when we are prepared to move forward. Dismissed.
JohnKilltrane fucked around with this message at 22:09 on Dec 1, 2023 |
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Dec 1, 2023 18:57
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I thought the joke with Damir Suran was him being chronically bad at coming up with non-obvious pseudonyms but the oblivious officers work really well. I had this on a demo disc way back then, even went as far as setting up a network for the multiplayer despite having no one to play it with - just wanted to toy around with the awesome units. I might have an unreasonable fondness for Battlecruisers ever since.
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Dec 1, 2023 19:10
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JohnKilltrane posted:
Worth noting, I don't know if the Custom campaign you found lacked the Voiceovers for the Briefings, but this particular line is actually spoken by Magistrate Collins. Mass Recall, the mod for Starcraft 2 that imports the Starcraft 1 campaigns into the Starcraft 2 engine (with some liberties taken with difficulty and some optional settings) happens to include this Loomings campaign, and has the full audio for briefings. Also, I am greatly amused at how you decided to roll with both permutations of Samir/Damir's name due to most people who voted for them voting for both or either XD ...also, I swear I remember Gui Montag having more than 160 HP, but I guess I'm wrong; I looked it up thinking they nerfed his stats for the Cerberus Firebats, but nope. For some reason, Gui just gets the short end of the stick amongst all the Terran Infantry Heroes in terms of HP. BlazetheInferno fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Dec 1, 2023 |
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Dec 1, 2023 19:23
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 Welp, someone is getting horribly murdered and it's not Duran.
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Dec 1, 2023 19:25
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JohnKilltrane posted:(Oh, don’t roll your eyes at me, you all knew this was coming) you can't stop me  now the real question is favorite duran duran song, because there's too many to choose from.
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Dec 1, 2023 19:37
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JohnKilltrane posted:
JohnKilltrane posted:
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Dec 1, 2023 19:50
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See, they ain’t so tough. These critters bleed just like anybody else.
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JohnKilltrane posted:
Which they then brought back for SC2.
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Dec 1, 2023 20:08
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BlazetheInferno posted:Worth noting, I don't know if the Custom campaign you found lacked the Voiceovers for the Briefings, but this particular line is actually spoken by Magistrate Collins. Mass Recall, the mod for Starcraft 2 that imports the Starcraft 1 campaigns into the Starcraft 2 engine (with some liberties taken with difficulty and some optional settings) happens to include this Loomings campaign, and has the full audio for briefings. Nope! That was just a weird mistake on my part. The campaign I have is fully voiced, I just accidentally did the wrong picture. And then I guess went back and noticed that was weird but instead made a note about Collins not saying anything. Nostalgamus posted:This is not what's being said in Zerg 05: Hah, yep, that's exactly what I was thinking of, thanks. I'll go back and fix those things. I also think I left out a piece of intermission text, but that one will have to wait until tonight to be fixed.
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Dec 1, 2023 20:08
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Having Duran be so completely disrespected by people he probably see as totally beneath him is just perfect.
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Dec 1, 2023 21:10
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Anybody know if the original standalone demo was mechanically the same as the initial release of the full game? I only ever played it as a "custom campaign" in the full game, but a lot of pre-release demos are prepared just enough in advance that they'll miss some last minute tweaking (or occasionally major changes) so just wondering.
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Dec 1, 2023 23:12
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I forgot that you weren't American JohnKilltrane until you mentioned the accent thing. I follow a number of LPs and I can't quite keep all of that straight for purposes of cultural references. I'm not from the US either, but I've been to the southeast where those dialects come from. I wouldn't recommend it.anilEhilated posted:I thought the joke with Damir Suran was him being chronically bad at coming up with non-obvious pseudonyms but the oblivious officers work really well. I didn't see the Duran Duran joke coming either until it happened. I completely bought into the idea of the constantly mis-named poor bastard who is a decent chap but has to deal with idiots. Comic relief in the midst of chaos and blood.
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Dec 2, 2023 04:08
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I'm from the US and can't place Magistrate Collins' accent any more precisely than "southern" tbh
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Dec 2, 2023 04:12
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He sounds a little froghorn-leghorn to me.
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Dec 2, 2023 04:36
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JustJeff88 posted:I forgot that you weren't American JohnKilltrane until you mentioned the accent thing. I follow a number of LPs and I can't quite keep all of that straight for purposes of cultural references. I'm not from the US either, but I've been to the southeast where those dialects come from. I wouldn't recommend it. The funny thing is, Samir Duran's annoyed quotes in-game when you click him too often are basically nothing but Duran Duran jokes. Including that specific one included in the update!
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Dec 2, 2023 04:46
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JohnKilltrane posted:
Sort of the opposite. Green is the player's color in that mission, and white is rescuable. That green one spawns in and gets the others under your control, which puts them all in immediate danger from the Zerg before your soldiers have reached their location.
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Dec 2, 2023 09:36
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Having just recently managed to catch up on the Warcraft lp thread I'm struck by just how much variety there is in this demo alone compared to basically the entirety of warcraft 2. Blizzard went in a few years from making cheap shovelware SNES games to ultra-primitive RTS games to a fully fleshed out RTS campaign gold standard. Shame where they went after this. Alpha3KV posted:Sort of the opposite. Green is the player's color in that mission, and white is rescuable. That green one spawns in and gets the others under your control, which puts them all in immediate danger from the Zerg before your soldiers have reached their location. Stupid Staredit tricks, I love it. Pretty sure some of those custom campaigns on CampaignCreations used this exact trick quite a bit.
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Dec 2, 2023 14:39
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The demo campaign is a genuinely good demo of the game, showing you the major mission types and introducing you to the mess that is about to descend on these rear end in a top hat star-Confederates. I remember it years later, myself.
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Dec 2, 2023 14:44
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Finally caught up on this thread and excellent work, and super hype to see the third party stuff I never played as a kid or teen. I have one question maybe I missed being brought up, and maybe no one knows but like... how the gently caress is a hydralisk a range unit? Look at it! It's a horrible nightmare naga with literal scythes for hands! Like has anyone at Blizz ever commented on it? Was it a melee unit that got changed in the eleventh hour when they realized the bugs needed some land ranged units? Like I just don't get how an artist turns in a hydralisk - an otherwise killer design - when given the assignment "ranged attacker"
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Dec 6, 2023 09:16
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:Finally caught up on this thread and excellent work, and super hype to see the third party stuff I never played as a kid or teen. According to this https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/12/03/20-years-of-starcraft-an-ign-retrospective it was originally designed as a melee unit, but changed to ranged fairly early on. They were also the first Zerg unit designed, while the marine was the first terran one and the dragoon the first protoss.
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Dec 6, 2023 11:05
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Oh, right! I completely forgot to announce the voting results. For additional content, Option Four: Loomings and Enslavers won by a considerable landslide. And as you can tell from the above update, Samir Duran/Damir Duran won the poll, but given that it was pretty close, and that I think it would be a good fit character-wise, I'm thinking we might use Mira Han as our character for Enslavers rather than holding another vote.
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Dec 6, 2023 19:02
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the fact that duran is trying to be duran and people keep getting it wrong is amusing to me
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Dec 6, 2023 20:08
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ilmucche posted:the fact that duran is trying to be duran and people keep getting it wrong is amusing to me The supervillain's Start of Darkness is that nobody could be bothered to remember his name.
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Dec 7, 2023 18:26
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bladededge posted:The supervillain's Start of Darkness is that nobody could be bothered to remember his name. He already told us his name, it's Duran! Duran!
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Dec 7, 2023 18:57
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Please tell me that there’s going to be random song lyrics scattered throughout the Damir Suran updates.
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Dec 7, 2023 19:55
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Snorb posted:He already told us his name, it's Duran! Duran! ♫His name is Samir, and he's a mole for Amon's band♫
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Dec 8, 2023 01:26
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Unit Spotlight: Observer The Observer as it appears in the manual. Cost: 25 minerals, 75 vespene, 1 supply HP: 40 Shields: 20 Armour: 0 Size: Small Damage: N/A Speed: ~3.33 (+ ~1.66) Sight: 9 (+2) Special: Detector, Permanently Cloaked. The Observer is a modest unit – so modest, in fact, that I forgot to spotlight it during the Protoss campaign so we’re doing it here instead. The spiritual successor of the Flying Machine, Zeppelin, and Eye of Kilrogg (although sadly the Observer can’t bait Destroyers into sinking one another with friendly fire), the Observer has one purpose and that’s to look at things. However, since reconnaissance is absolutely critical to victory, this is an extremely important purpose. Observers allow Protoss to keep an eye on where the enemy is, what they’re doing, thwart sneaky cloaking or burrowing strategies, and even just spot distant or high-ground targets for Templar to Storm. It’s a must-have unit that Protoss can expect to be building in nearly all circumstances, campaign or competitive. It also illustrates the oddity of tech in this game: the Observer is often thought of as being a fair bit lower on the tech tree than the Reaver, despite having roughly the same requirements: A Robo Facility and an additional building. And part of that is that the Observatory is a very cheap structure with one of the fastest build times in the game. But it’s more down to the cost of the unit itself and the way it balances against your needs at any given point. The result is this paradigm where Observers are low(ish) tech and Reavers are mid tech and Templar are high tech, despite the fact that if you just look at the tech tree itself all three seem to be at roughly the same point. But where the Observer is comparatively inexpensive, and where it’s helpful or even necessary to get one out quickly to counter potential cheese strategies, it ends up being probably the first unit Protoss gets that isn’t a Zealot or Dragoon. As seen, the Observer is permanently cloaked, which is a big help. First, it compensates for the unit’s horrid durability. Second, it allows you to observe the enemy without them necessarily knowing that it’s happening – even the ComSat Station has its telltale blue sparkles that are visible to all players. And third, it makes it almost impossible for the enemy to tell how many Observers you have and where they are, which is a pain when it comes to evaluating the viability of more off-book, sneaky strategies. The Observer gets two upgrades, each costing 150 minerals and 150 vespene. The first is Gravitic Booster, which bumps the Observer’s speed from the painfully slow 3.33 up to a much more reasonable 5. The second is Sensor Array, which increases the Observer’s sight from 9 to 11. These are both very helpful, allowing the Observer to cover more ground, making it easier to escape when detected, and providing more vision in general.  There's a dearth of concept art and fan art for the Observer, so here's a pretty neat Lego one by magurean.paul over on Rebrickable. Fluff: Observers are little unmanned research drones the Protoss send out to catalogue… well, everything. They go out and record whatever they happen to spot and transmit it back to the Observatory, where the knowledge is archived for future generations of Protoss. They’re particularly useful for surveys of inhospitable areas, or secretly recording the battles of other peoples to glean tactical insight. Their sensor arrays are complex and sophisticated to the point that they’re even able to pick out entities that would otherwise be hidden from them – the downside to this is that so much of the drone’s square footage is dedicated to sensors that there isn’t really much space for things like shields or armour. To compensate, the Observer has a cloaking system, one so efficient that it doesn’t require any sort of additional power but rather is able to run indefinitely off the Observer’s systems. One particularly interesting bit of fluff is that the manual specifies that the Protoss don’t bother putting these cloaking systems on Observers intended for deep space exploration, which is fun and makes sense. Only the shorter range ones used for surveying hostile situations are permanently invisible, which is handy as those are the only ones we’ll need. Tech Fluff: Sadly, not much interesting here. Gravitic Booster is more or less the same as the Scout and Shuttle upgrade: Observers can optionally be outfitted with a propulsion system that integrates anti-grav technology with its standard micro-thruster engines. They can also be retrofitted with an additional Sensor Array, which further improves the Observer’s already potent capabilities.  The Observer as it could have been in Starcraft Ghost. Campaign Usage: We always want these to keep an eye out for enemy incursions and to scout what sort of defenses we’ll be up against. I’m going to very hesitantly, with no personal experience of playing Protoss online, suggest that their upgrades are a higher priority here? Static defense is very common in the campaign and tends to be scattered everywhere, so it’s very easy for an unupgraded Observer to blunder into a Missile Turret or Spore Colony, which is a death sentence. They’re also handy for dealing with the occasional bit of cloaking we might face. We didn’t really have much difficulty with this in the first campaign here, but we’ll be seeing some nastier tricks in Brood War that we’ll want to be sure we have Detection for. Competitive Usage: Again, ubiquitous. If the game makes it past the opening salvos, you’re getting these, period. In all three matchups they’re being used to keep an eye on where the enemy is and what they’re up to, so we’ll leave that out of the matchup specifics and just assume it for everything. Vs. Terran: Getting an Observer out is a high priority and usually marks an important point in the game as it allows your Dragoons to play minesweeper. How efficiently you can clear minefields can make a big difference in the early-midgame and your ability to start really putting the coals to Terran’s feet. Minespotting and scouting are the traditional uses. We are seeing, however, a meta shift here – where Protoss is becoming increasingly Shuttle-oriented, Terran is getting more and more Wraiths, and they’re also getting Cloaking for those Wraiths. If you’ll remember the Arbiter spotlight I said that ComSat Stations are for scouting and using them to detect is often considered a waste; this particular situation is an exception to that rule, where Terran will happily spend a sweep or two to find Observers so cloaked Wraiths can snipe them and then happily eliminate entire fleets of Shuttles without fear. Which all means that Protoss must adapt to becoming more and more careful with its Observers as well as produce them in larger quantities; both to replace destroyed ones and so they can have some dedicated to spotting Wraiths in addition to spotting mines. Also, fun fact: an Observer is small enough that if it stops directly above a Missile Turret, the Turret’s targeting will bug out and it won’t be able to shoot the Observer – or anything. If Terran catches this it’s not too hard for them to get the Turret working again (normally a simple Stop command, or sometimes multiple Stop commands, will sort it out) but that’s not a small “if.” Protoss can use this to get another Observer through to scout or even sneak in a Shuttle to get some harassment happening. This is actually very rare; Missile Turrets fire quickly enough that they can often destroy an Observer before it reaches the required position, so it’s often safest to instead position the Observer over the Turret while it builds. Which means you’ve got an Observer sitting there instead of doing something useful, and the whole thing could be shut down at any moment if Terran happens to notice (and it is visually noticeable, as the Turret stops spinning). So it’s more of an interesting quirk than anything – in fact, I’ve heard it joked a few times that anytime you see someone share this “exploit” online, it’s probably a Terran player trying to bait Protoss players into wasting their Observers. I guess technically it doesn’t need to be an Observer – Scourge are also small enough to pull it off, maybe even Wraiths/Scouts/Shuttles etc. But on the off chance you see someone trying to use this exploit, it’ll probably be with an Observer.    With Observer in tow, Mini is now much more confident handling these mines. Vs. Zerg: In Brood War Zerg is going to get a powerful unit that can attack while burrowed, so revealing that unit is quite important in this matchup, but recon is definitely the main pull here. Zerg has such flexible tech and so many possibilities that Protoss really needs Observers to try to keep an eye on exactly what’s coming for them so they know what they can use in response. Are they getting Ultras? Are they getting Defilers? How many Scourge do they have out? Is it enough that you can get away with a Shuttle drop? These are all questions that the Observer can answer. Unfortunately, the flimsy Observer is very easily picked off by Hydras, Mutas, or even a single Scourge (though that last one is only because Shields take full damage from all sources), so good Overlord coverage can make it tricky to get an Observer through.  Stork's Protoss army is on the move - but not without an Observer or two in case our Zerg player, Queen, has any nasty surprises planned. Vs. Protoss: If you’ll recall the Dragoon spotlight, Observers are part of the Protoss Rock Paper Scissors game: Observer + Dragoon builds trounce Dark Templar builds but tend to lose to Oops All Dragoons builds. And again, at the pro level, Observer + Dragoon is generally the most common build seen in PvP and the other two generally exist as rush strategies that seek to end the game fairly quickly. While Dark Templar certainly see some use outside of rush builds, and defending against that is important, the main use of Observers here is, well, spotting other Observers. You want to shut down the enemy’s scouting so they aren’t getting important information like how many Dragoons you have, the locations of your Shuttles, and if you’ve got High Templar yet.  Our Blue Protoss, Stork, has a Shuttle flying towards the action, but unbeknownst to him, it's spotted by Snow's Observer, hidden at the bottom of the screen. So much for the element of surprise... assuming Snow noticed it. Five Minutes Shorter: In a sense, because of their incredibly valuable role of providing intel, all Observers are heroes <3 …but in another, truer, sense, there are no Observer heroes.
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Dec 9, 2023 00:20
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I assumed that you skipped observers because they are a non-combat unit. Thank you for doing a write-up of them. I have two questions for people who keep up on reasonably competitive SC1. I've watched matches online, but I don't pretend to know about the trends, meta-game etc. 1) Firstly, in the non-'mirror' matchups, which is the most and least balanced currently? I'm referring to Protoss vs Terran, Terran vs Zerg and Zerg vs Protoss. Obviously, this doesn't apply to PvP, TvT and ZvZ. I'm not saying that SC1 is unbalanced... it's very balanced, if only by accident. Nevertheless, there has to be a bias, however gentle, when a faction isn't facing itself. For example, I used to play the card/video game Yomi, and they used to keep statistics about how many matches out of 10 character Y would win when facing character Z across all human players in all tournaments. I'm sure that there is a similar set of statistics for SC1 and 2. 2) Secondly, why *is* SC so popular in (South) Korea? It might be in North too for all I know. I remember watching a match a few years ago, SC2 I think, and it was an Italian versus a Frenchman and I recall being surprised because I'd gotten the idea that SC, either one, wasn't very popular in Europe. I'm just curious as to the sociocultural factors that led to the two games being so popular there and why such a high portion of for-money players seemingly come from a country that's of medium population, about 28th (according to Wikipedia) in the world. If it were China I would understand more because China has a ludicrous population. Has anyone ever done a study about this?
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Dec 9, 2023 00:39
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My understanding of the South Korea situation is that StarCraft came out at the same time South Korea got readily available access to computers and net cafes, so it became pretty ubiquitous. It’s a bit like how everyone of a particular age bracket played pong or Oregon trail or Pac-Man. Once you have an entire country familiar with a single game, it obviously creates fertile ground for things like professional leagues to spring up and StarCraft had a lot of longevity there, in large part to a bunch of accidental programming quirks and UI limitations that managed to balance it out and make it impossible to hit a skill ceiling or fully “solve” it.
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Dec 9, 2023 01:25
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I think it goes a bit beyond that, too. After the economic crash in the early 90's that shook all of east asia, South Korea leaned hard into computer technology as its strategy for recovery. Most ordinary Koreans were too poor to actually own a computer, however. Between a big demand for using computers and a lot of need to start new small business, net cafes sprung up and were a huge phenomenon in Korea. Since people weren't owning their own computers, it was very fertile grounds for a small number of games to become massive successes as the reliable things every cafe owner would install on their machines. Starcraft was the best option at just the right time to be absolutely everywhere.
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Dec 9, 2023 01:42
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It's not that popular anymore either. When I moved to Korea in 2011 it was right at the tail end, there were still some live Starcraft events but those were over with fairly soon, none of my students had ever played it or had much familiarity. League of Legends displaced it. I guess it's seen a little resurgence and it never went away, but Korea isn't Starcraftland like it was for a while. DOTA is the game China went nuts for. League of Legends is considered a simple game for idiots.
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Dec 9, 2023 02:17
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JustJeff88 posted:1) Firstly, in the non-'mirror' matchups, which is the most and least balanced currently? I'm referring to Protoss vs Terran, Terran vs Zerg and Zerg vs Protoss. Obviously, this doesn't apply to PvP, TvT and ZvZ. I'm not saying that SC1 is unbalanced... it's very balanced, if only by accident. Nevertheless, there has to be a bias, however gentle, when a faction isn't facing itself. For example, I used to play the card/video game Yomi, and they used to keep statistics about how many matches out of 10 character Y would win when facing character Z across all human players in all tournaments. I'm sure that there is a similar set of statistics for SC1 and 2. This forum post might be up your alley, though things are, as always, different at the pro level.
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Dec 9, 2023 03:47
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Grand Fromage posted:It's not that popular anymore either. When I moved to Korea in 2011 it was right at the tail end, there were still some live Starcraft events but those were over with fairly soon, none of my students had ever played it or had much familiarity. League of Legends displaced it. I guess it's seen a little resurgence and it never went away, but Korea isn't Starcraftland like it was for a while. I played organised but not super-serious TF2 back in the glory days of that game. I always thought that I was dreadful at the game, then I stopped playing with semi-serious players and dominated more casual ones. I realised that I wasn't bad, just everyone else was better. That said, I don't keep up with trends in MP gaming at all. I liked video games as a hobby as a lad because I didn't like the other children and I could play them alone. Then, I did a little MMOing and FPSing as a young adult... which made me realise that people are even worse online because they can hide behind their anonymity. Then I went back to gaming as a solo hobby. Also, I don't like having to rely on other people to play games, which is why I was looking for Starcraft AI that was better than the lovely default AI but not pro-level. I don't care to play against non-AI opponents anymore. Decoy Badger posted:This forum post might be up your alley, though things are, as always, different at the pro level. This is very interesting; thank you.
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Dec 9, 2023 04:00
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JustJeff88 posted:1) Firstly, in the non-'mirror' matchups, which is the most and least balanced currently? I'm referring to Protoss vs Terran, Terran vs Zerg and Zerg vs Protoss. Obviously, this doesn't apply to PvP, TvT and ZvZ. I'm not saying that SC1 is unbalanced... it's very balanced, if only by accident. Nevertheless, there has to be a bias, however gentle, when a faction isn't facing itself. For example, I used to play the card/video game Yomi, and they used to keep statistics about how many matches out of 10 character Y would win when facing character Z across all human players in all tournaments. I'm sure that there is a similar set of statistics for SC1 and 2. Decoy Badger posted:This forum post might be up your alley, though things are, as always, different at the pro level. https://jackyvso.github.io/Starcraft/    They also break it down over time for each matchup, etc. The data also shows just how good Flash is and how he is in a league of his own.
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Dec 9, 2023 13:21
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the one thing i'm always genuinely jealous of in the protoss roster is observers. they're such neat little fellas! and so useful!!!
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Dec 9, 2023 15:49
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Are observers small enough that I can just put this one in my dishwasher, or do I need to head out to the carwash? 'cause this one needs a drat spa day.
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Dec 10, 2023 02:43
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Kith posted:the one thing i'm always genuinely jealous of in the protoss roster is observers. they're such neat little fellas! and so useful!!! They sound so cute too. They're great.
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Dec 10, 2023 02:54
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DTurtle posted:Here is an analysis of all ASL/KSL pro matches from 2016 to 2023: That's really well balanced for a game that's 25 years old!
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Dec 10, 2023 04:04
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The slight advantage in each matchup even has a rock-paper-scissors (in this case, Protoss-Terran-Zerg) quality.
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Dec 10, 2023 04:11
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Karia posted:Are observers small enough that I can just put this one in my dishwasher, or do I need to head out to the carwash? 'cause this one needs a drat spa day. Just a rough guess, but you'll probably want a carwash, the "real scale" images I've seen suggest that an observer is about twice the size of a vulture bike.
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Dec 10, 2023 08:37
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DTurtle posted:Here is an analysis of all ASL/KSL pro matches from 2016 to 2023: This is excellent stuff, thank you for sharing it. The big sudden outlier in 2022 of Terran smashing Protoss is very interesting to me; I wonder if the current reversal of that trend will hold true long-term or not. habeasdorkus posted:That's really well balanced for a game that's 25 years old! For reference, the winrate of Protoss over Terran and Terran over Zerg is a fair bit lower than the winrate of White over Black in chess. Of course, that doesn't stop people constantly grousing on the internet about the other races being OP. Karia posted:Are observers small enough that I can just put this one in my dishwasher, or do I need to head out to the carwash? 'cause this one needs a drat spa day. I mean, you can put anything in your dishwasher if your dishwasher's big enough. Carwash would probably be a better bet, though. Grand Fromage posted:DOTA is the game China went nuts for. League of Legends is considered a simple game for idiots. Man, I need to get with the times. When people say "game" and "China" I still think HoMM 3.
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Dec 10, 2023 15:32
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