Blizzard rep interview. SC2 UI, game speed, minimum system

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ShackNews has interviewed Blizzard representative Bob Colayco at E3 '07. Among things mentioned are the games user interface (UI), minimum system requirements, game speed and level editor (Scumedit).

E3 07 Starcraft II Interview

"These aren't final--they may not even make it to the game," says prudent Blizzard rep Bob Colayco, as Protoss units crawl over a rocky landscape on screen. "We're in a really experimental phase right now."

Colayco is narrating a short video of StarCraft II, which, of course, most of the internet has seen already. "Come to BlizzCon," he tells us over and over, but right now it's E3, and we're all starved for StarCraft to the point of redundancy. Behind closed doors, with giant Blizzard logos covering the walls, the excitement of the game's first announcement returns. Finally--StarCraft II.

"What's interesting is that every time he scores a killing blow, his weapon gets more powerful," Colayco says to the sounds Protoss Soul Hunters beating up on a Terran base. As the hovering hunters fire away at a barracks, their yellow-green beams begin to thicken noticably, until the building explodes with a shower of particles. "There's not going to be an infinite progression of power; there will be a cap to it."

An early worry brought on by early videos was that gameplay seemed to have slowed in comparison to StarCraft, but Colayco assures us this is not the case. "This is running at normal speed. When you're actually playing, most games are going to be on fastest, so things are going to be more bang-bang than what you're seeing right here."

The new Photon Cannons, named Phase Cannons, can warp from place to place, entirely mobile within power range of their Pylons. Many units have seen upgrades or changes in this way, such as the Archons changing into Twilight Archons, which can be made from any combination of either Dark or Light Templars. The interceptor-swarming Carrier, now renamed the Tempest, is functionally similar to its forebear, but features some slight variations to its strategic value.

"What's different about the Tempest is that as of now, it's a little bit cheaper to build [than the Carrier], less minerals and gas," Colayco notes. "And also, the undercarriage shield is very thick against ground attacks, so you can see it can absorb quite a few missiles before it gets through the shield. This makes it good for assaulting bases, but more vulnerable against aircraft."

As the presentation comes to a close, we have the opportunity to pose some questions to Colayco regarding the past, present, and future of StarCraft II. We spend a dense half-hour going over single player concerns, multiplayer plans, early decisions by the team, and everything from grouping selection caps to oft-dreaded hero units.

On the official start of development:

"Since the Frozen Throne shipped, so that would be 2003. Pre-production started then. When we were getting down to the end of development World of Warcraft, some of those resources were shifted to help make that happen, and then shifted back. There are a lot of members on the team, many of which worked on the original StarCraft and on WarCraft 3."

On early discussion of adding a fourth playable race:

"There was a lot of discussion, and certainly, we did think about it. If you introduce a fourth race, and you've got all these cool ideas for new units and stuff like that, do you put those all in this fourth race that's going to be uber cool and new, and maybe sprinkle a couple things on the other three? Or do you just totally blow up the existing three?

"They just decided they wanted to go back to the original three races and put in all these crazy new ideas, and make them even more different than they were before."

On the Protoss-Zerg hybrid race seen in Brood War:

"We haven't talked about anything like that yet. As far as multiplayer, there are three races. But that was talked about in the story, and definitely the story will pick up where Brood War left off."

On improving single player:

"There are definitely some ambitious plans in place to do something different with the story mode campaign. Add some elements of replayability to it and give you a chance to really do something different. We'll probably have more to say about that later, but right now, it's not going to be--I'll just say, it's not going to be one mission at a time. There'll be some new stuff in there."

On catering StarCraft to E-Sports:

"I would say that's a very big concern. We tend for this game to be very competitive and very popular within the competitive RTS realm, and so we want to make the game very fast-paced and very responsive, and also just give a lot of opportunities for players to show off their skill level. For example, you've got the Stalker, let's say you're up on a cliff against Zealots--you can shoot the Zealots as they come up around, and then as soon as the Zealots come up to the top, you can just blink down to the bottom and then keep shooting as they come back around, so you can keep kiting them back and forth that way."

On Battle.net upgrades:

"There will definitely be big upgrades to Battle.net. We haven't talked about what those features might be, but definitely that will be a concern. To make sure that the game stays popular, we want to make it easy to record playback demos, and easy to distribute those things, because that's a big part of the community--not only for a professional match, but for your own enjoyment. You record a game that you play on Battle.net when get your butt kicked, and it's like, 'Why did that happen?' You can go back to the tape and try to evaluate what did happen.

"I'm not sure if the legacy games (StarCraft, WarCraft III, and Diablo II, etc) are going to be on the revamped version of Battle.net--if those are going to be all put together, or how that's going to work. Those types of things we'll be able to figure out once it's all built."

On multiplayer matchmaking:

"First of all, there are a lot of things--with Warcraft 3, they did the skill-rating matching, so that's been refined--and something that they're even doing with World of Warcraft when you get into battlegrounds, so you don't have all these pre-made teams with epics. In StarCraft II we're definitely going to take that into account, matching you with people who appear to be at your skill level. But again, there will be tools that allow you to watch replays and examine what you were doing. 'How did he get a Colossus so quickly?' And you go back and look and see that he built a forge before you did, and so you can start examining these replays, and that will help people a lot."

On scalability for low-end computers:

"That's definitely a big concern. We want to make sure that the engine is very scalable and accessible to a wide range of systems, but we still want to make it look really nice. So we've got a lot of pretty cool graphical effects here, but some things you might be able to turn off are dynamic shadows and lighting, and that might give you some performance if you need it. The only thing we've talked about with minimum specs so far is Pixel Shader 2.0, which will be a minimum requirement. Other than that, we still want it to be accessible. It'll be on XP, and we are also shipping simultaneously on Mac."

On including a level editor:

"I think when you go from Warcraft 2 to StarCraft to Warcraft 3, you see a progression of the power of the level editors and the mod tools that are available. We play stuff like DOTA (Defense of the Ancients) in the office all the time. We want the community to be able to make cool stuff like that, so it's definitely going to be a goal to ship a level editor with the game that's even more powerful and easier to use, so we can get the community working on great maps and mods."

On the scale of battles:

"We definitely want to recapture the epic scale, with tons of units on screen. Right now, internally on this build, the unit cap is 200, just like the original. It could go up or go down, but the development team sees the huge scale of battles as a central theme of StarCraft, and something they wanted to recapture in this one."

On whether a unit selection cap was discussed:

"Absolutely, and that's something they discuss all the time. Right now it's an unlimited selection. If you watch the video carefully you can see that you can grab tons of guys at once."

On including hero units in multiplayer:

"There isn't going to be hero-type units in multiplayer. [Laughs] This is really about I'm gonna bust you down with 75 Zerglings, and you can see in this preview the number of Zerglings they throw at you. In the single player mode they're gonna have Raynor and Kerrigan, and they're gonna have cool abilities, but that's not a focus on multiplayer."

On the traditionally large StarCraft UI:

"I mean, this is still something that they're working on constantly. I don't know that they're ever going to get rid of it entirely, because we view this stuff as useful. You can see that on a widescreen, we've still got a lot of real estate that's devoted to seeing the game. But definitely at this stage, that's something that will probably evolve over time.

"I don't know what they're doing as far as modability of the UI. That's something they go back and forth on, whether they'll let people do it. As we get closer to release, we'll provide more answers on that sort of thing."

On drawing inspiration from other RTS games:

"We all play a lot of games at Blizzard. We have libraries of existing games that come out, and we're all playing those things. Definitely all the designers keep a close eye on what's out there. Not necessarily in the RTS genre--they play all kinds of different things. There's inspiration drawn from a lot of sources.

"As far as specific features, "Oh, we need to do that," I think the main thing to keep it true to what the original StarCraft is: three really unique races that are balanced, that are very flexible, and also very fast. Competitive gameplay that's entertaining to watch. So any feature that kind of lends itself to that is good."

On excluding classic units such as Dragoons:

"That's something that's being evaluated all the time. So you've got Stalkers that can shoot ground and air, but they don't have as many hit points. They're fast; Dragoons weren't. Then there's the Immortal, which is almost kind of like a siege version of a Dragoon. It can't shoot air, but it's got this powerful shield, so it can just charge siege tanks. So Dragoons are not in there. The Tempest is similar to a Carrier, but no Carriers. Scouts aren't in there."

On keeping the feel of each race intact:

"I think they're going to keep their characteristics. Protoss being kind of enigmatic, powerful but not so numerous type of race, where they've got these really high-tech weapons. Terran who are very defensive-oriented and versatile.

"The philosophies behind the races will stay the same, but just due to the fact we're taking some units out and putting new units in, and putting new abilities on existing units, that's really going to change the way people play. So yeah, maybe in the early game you can do a Zealot rush, but maybe that's not going to work as well because the defenses are going to be different."

On gathering community feedback:

"We're actively soliciting feedback from professional RTS players, pro SC players, pro Warcraft 3 players, and as we get further down the development cycle we're going to be bringing guys in and inviting them to sit down and play. And we're just kind of going to sponge their brains for what they think about it."