GAMEPLAYQUOTE
Pardo kicked things off by tracing Blizzard's RTS history. WarCraft II was the root of Blizzard's competitive RTS game experience, as it was one of the earliest to go online. When StarCraft came out, it was the first that Blizzard did to feature three truly asymmetrical factions. Then it was WarCraft III's turn, which Pardo explained as a drastic departure from the gameplay underlying StarCraft. It slowed the pace of gameplay, focused battles on smaller numbers of units, introduced more RPG elements, powerful heroes, and more micro-management of unit abilities.
With StarCraft 2, "we're really going back to our roots," says Pardo. By this he means the sequel will be more StarCraft, more focused on fast-paced gameplay and lesser amounts of micromanagement, rather than an evolution of the WarCraft 3 formula. There won't, for instance, be anything approximating WarCraft 3's "creeping," whereby players hacked away at NPCs on the map to increase hero experience levels and acquire items. Unit abilities in StarCraft 2 are largely automated, and there will still be a focus on proper resource management, at least to a greater extent than in WarCraft 3.
One of Blizzard's primary design goals with StarCraft 2 was to cater to professional gamers' demands. "A lot of the concepts we put into the unit design [in StarCraft 2] is so there's skill differentiation," says Pardo. By this he means that truly skilled players will be able to absolutely crush those of lesser ability. This differs from WarCraft 3, says Pardo, in that skill level had a lesser impact on the game's outcome, or at the very least prolonged games featuring players of widely varying skill levels.
SINGLE PLAYERQUOTE
Though few details are available at this point, Pardo says Blizzard is aiming to, "provide a great solo experience." He continued with, "We're really going to focus in on the story; we have a lot of new ideas for how the campaign unfolds." Andy Chambers filled us in a little more during the question and answer session by saying Mengst's Terran Dominion would act as the main Terran force, "Raynor's been having some adventures," and the Xel'naga will have, "a rather epic tale for StarCraft 2." He went on to say, "A lot of those plot elements [in Brood Wars] get played out to their fullest extend in SC2" says Andy Chambers. The interesting point is the implications of the final secret mission in Brood Wars and the mention of a Protoss-Zerg hybrid race. Note that there will only be three playable races in StarCraft 2, the Protoss, Terran, and Zerg, and the storyline takes place four years after the original.
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When asked about the status of the terrans (who were decimated at the end of the Brood War expansion pack for the original Starcraft), creative designer Andy Chambers explains that "the UED terran forces were destroyed by Kerrigan's zerg armies (though a few surviving companies may stil be around somewhere)," and that the Terran faction in Starcraft II will primarily consist of the "evil empire" of the Terran Dominion. When asked about the status of lead character Jim Raynor, Chambers replies that since Starcraft II takes place four years after Brood War, "Raynor has been having some adventures for sure," but declines to comment further. Chambers also suggests that the ancient Xel'Naga, which helped both the protoss and zerg races become what they are (but were later destroyed by the zerg) will also figure into Starcraft II's story "in a rather epic tale."
UNIT BALANCEQUOTE
Pardo highlighted a number of bullet points for design goals in the new game, mainly speed, saying the longest a StarCraft 2 match should take is around 20 minutes. Blizzard is emphasizing each races significantly different play styles, though they won't yet reveal how the Terran and Zerg can hope to counter the impressively powerful abilities of the Protoss' Mothership. Specific attention was paid to low-level tech tree abilities, as Pardo explained Blizzard has taken steps to expand the available options and make early-game mechanics more varied.
One small gameplay difference revealed during the panel was how unit positioning is affected by the fog of war. Now when one unit attacks another from higher ground, the fog of war surrounding the higher unit is no longer automatically revealed, meaning the unit at the lower position can't return fire. Obviously this makes having high ground positioning much more valuable. It affects mechanics for new units like the Protoss Stalker, who can blink forward and traverse differences in terrain height. They can't, however, hop up to a higher ledge if the fog of war at their destination has yet to be revealed. This can be rectified by flying in an air unit to push back the fog a bit, letting the units to blink up to the ledge and assault whatever lies beyond - an excellent tactic for surprise attacks. The Stalker blink ability is also useful for kiting enemies, which was demonstrated with a group of them blinking around zealots and blowing them to bits.
Dustin Browder explained a few more unit specifics. He again explained the Protoss Immortal's ability to put up near-impenetrable shields when under heavy fire, such as that from siege tanks, yet being vulnerable to weak attacks that won't activate their shields. The Immortal is designed to be a slow moving unit, so they're not skilled at escaping an attack. Though they possess heavy armor, their maneuverability is a severely limiting factor when fighting Zealots, Marines, or Zerglings.
Explained again were the mechanics of the Protoss Pheonix, which can perform an overload attack to shoot out multiple energy blasts. After the attack the unit is rendered inert for a short while, meaning careful implementation of the overload is required. Finally he demonstrated an advanced use of the Protoss' warping ability, which can be done within phase fields surrounding Pylons or the new Phase Prisms. He warped a few Zealots to cut off an enemy's advance into his base, trapping the invaders between the units and a structure. He followed up by warping in Stalkers to pepper the enemy with laser fire from behind a barrier row of Pylons.
BETA TEST & NAVAL COMBAT?QUOTE
There was no date announced for the eventual StarCraft 2 beta, but Pardo said they'll eventually take applications for play and accept a certain percentage. A number of professional StarCraft gamers will also be specifically invited. In response to a question from the audience, Browder noted, "we have no plans at this time for naval combat." Yes, naval combat in space...
Source:
StarCraft 2's Gameplay Balance - The evolution of Blizzard's RTS mechanics.
Source:
Blizzard talks Starcraft II gameplay details - Gamespot
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Rob McNaughton then took the stage to speak briefly about creating units. Blizzard is using Photoshop for texturing, 3D Studio Max, and StarTools to integrate custom art into the game. StarTools is planned to be made available to the public along with ScummEdit for map creation. McNaughton went on to say the map editor will feature new scripting and trigger mechanics, and be a more powerful version than that found in WarCraft 3. In terms of fancy technical effects, StarCraft 2 is built on a DX9 engine and uses per pixel lighting, normal mapping, high dynamic range bloom, rendering and tone mapping, as well as integrated havoc physics. Using their engine, Blizzard is hoping to have up to 300 units on screen at once.
Source:
StarCraft 2's Art Design - How units and environments are being created in the sequel.
QUOTE
McNaughton explains that Starcraft II's graphics will be based off of the DirectX 9.0 API will full support for Pixel Shader 2.0, including support for conventional DirectX 9.0 effets such as normal mapping and high dynamic range lighting and bloom. However, though the game will be playable on both WindowsXP and Vista, Starcraft II, in its current early state, does not support DirectX 10. The artist tempers his description of the advanced graphical effects by explaining that although the game will feature advanced graphical effects, it will scale, to some extent, downward to still allow players who don't own cutting-edge PC hardware to play the game.
Source:
Blizzard talks Starcraft II art design - Gamespot
This post has been edited by Araes: May 20 2007, 09:11 PM 
May 20 2007, 05:59 PM
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