Campaign Creations

The last picture is I believe they said is a Dark Templar that can create Force Fields.

That "green thing" is to make Banelings, so Isk is right.

To all those who said 'fall this year', I am now laughing and pointing and saying told you so:

http://kotaku.com/5020519/youre-not-get ... -christmas

It's confirmed.  No StarCraft 2 this year for joo.

ya at the end of this year they'll finally star talking more about the campaign.

And word is they are already working on it.  In both StarCraft and WarCraft III, I remember interviews where they said the campaign was the last thing done (usually in the last 3 months).  If they are taking this log to do it then I am quite looking forward to it, as its sure to be comprehensive and entertaining.  Not to mention that whatever they spend time impelementing, we will reap the benefits by being able to use it.

I like the fact that you choose were you want to go to progress the campaign instead of just a chain of maps telling you that you are at Mar Sara or Tarsonis.

Here is some stuff from Blizzplanet's Medievaldragon when he was at the WWI.

There is a protoss unit -- I think it is the dark templar mechanical unit -- that creates forcefields. These forcefields can be used in various strategical situations such as creating a chokepoint where zerglings will be divided -- those in the back won't be able to do any damage while your units are ripping apart the ones in the front. The forcefields can be placed also in a straight line forcing the enemy to have to walk around. By then your ranging units can do heavy damage before the zerglings or any other melee unit is able to reach your units.

I asked Rob Pardo in the Q&A panel stream if they would add the Ghost abilities such as telekinesis and some form of telepathy or mind control which is characterized in the recent Starcraft novels and upcoming manga. I will see if I can get you a video of the Q&A panel. I approached Rob Pardo personally after the Q&A to get my press badge signed by him, and to follow up on the Ghost questions. Pretty much they want to make the Ghost a fearful assassin unit. With the current ability to snipe they can virtually kill anything in a few shots, except the bulky Ultralisk and other big units. However, with my point listened let's see if they can apply some interesting abilities from the lore in these novels to make justice to the Ghost's telekinetic/telepathic core abilities that could be used in higher tiers. A ghost could have telekinetic version of that protoss forcefield ability for specific strategic tasks. Maybe move doodads around telekinetically or toss doodads at enemy units, create chokepoints with doodads. Really hope they create something viable.

The mothership timebomb can be used strategically just before your mothership is about to die. That can give it the extra time to do damage with the units it is protecting.

Jackal

Position carefully to do aoe damage. Keep them on high ground to ambush a group in the lower terrain. It does a large fire stream.

The Thor

Assault unit from the factory Anti-air flak cannons, self-repair system creates tactical choices. Once the Thor dies the wreckage remains in the battlefield. You can choose to spend resources to repair the Thor back to action.

Four Thors and five marines were able to destroy a large group of mutalisks. Since the enemy didn't finish up the wreckage, the Thor was able to rebuild itself.

In the future ...

- Macro vs micro
- upgrade systems
- special abilities
- Battlenet
- Story Campaign

By the end of the year, Blizzard will be able to talk more about the story campaign. It is about one third done thus far.

so basically things we already know

Once the Thor dies the wreckage remains in the battlefield. You can choose to spend resources to repair the Thor back to action.

Very interesting... but I'd like to know if the wreckage can be destroyed (especially if it blocks pathing), if an enemy can use it, or even better, if the Zerg can infest it. Thoralisks FTW

Desler wrote: To all those who said 'fall this year', I am now laughing and pointing and saying told you so:

http://kotaku.com/5020519/youre-not-get ... -christmas

It's confirmed.  No StarCraft 2 this year for joo.

LOL, yeah, I'm glad I didn't get my hopes up too high.  I think we won't have it by this time next year either.  My guess is winter 2009 / early spring 2010.

xenon> It can be destroyed

Desler wrote: And word is they are already working on it.  In both StarCraft and WarCraft III, I remember interviews where they said the campaign was the last thing done (usually in the last 3 months).  If they are taking this log to do it then I am quite looking forward to it, as its sure to be comprehensive and entertaining.  Not to mention that whatever they spend time impelementing, we will reap the benefits by being able to use it.

They also mentioned that the campaigns will involve a much bigger amount of dialogues and in-game cutscenes this time, along with cinematic cutscenes that take several minutes long. I think we'll have some pretty good character development this time. 

Since Blizzard campaigns have the double function of introducing lore and the game's units, I can see why they leave them for last.

I'm still thinking Fall of 2009.  With a possibility of the announced date being pushed back to Christmas.  It sure is giving me a ton of time to prepare my new campaign - another reason I will only be doing 1 for SC2, I'll never have this much preperation time again.

The one thing I'm hoping for is a lot more in-game unit animations.  I really hope they do a lot of motion capture for this game, that would be ideal.

Special WWi 2008 Q&A:

Q: Why doesn't the baneling building grow out of the spawning pool?

A: that's the way design had it. Maybe later we'll decide we don't want that many buildings on the zerg side and put them together.

Q: In regards to art design - how are you going to show the downgrades of units - for example the overlord that isn't a detector.

A: If you notice when you upgrade the Overlord - there's all new art. There are a few things like that and we're working on that. Pretty much ig upgrades get changes in the art.

Q: How will the enviroment affect the textures of the units?

A: If's it's snowy map then there's snow on the buildings. We take it by a concept to concept basis. Some can make things too cartoony etc.

Q: How do you keep a balance between cartoony and the more serious SC style.

A: We really want to keep Warcraft over here & SC over here - separate. It was difficult for our team because we came from WC:TFT and then WOW so you could see earlier the brighter colors etc - some of that obviously carried over but we really want keep them separate.

Q: Will we see Panda's in SC? What's with the egyptian influence in the Protoss?

A: I think that if we put Pandas in SC someone would shoot me. Even in SC vanilla we wanted to take an ancient culture and mix it with science fiction.

Q: Will the Xel'Naga be in the game and will they be in the game?

A: There's nothing we can really say about that right now - but wouldn't that be cool?

Q: Will the map editor be able to modify the landscape since it's very complex (like blowing up a cliff)?

A: We've been talking about that and probably in the single player you'll see more of that sort of thing. I love it but in multiplayer we don't want that happening.

Q: How are you going to make the nydus worm travel through different types of terrain (water, space, etc)?

A: We still have to work on that but in your current build there is no worm it functions as a nydus canal - creep here, creep there, it shows up there.

Q: What kinds of special effects will be in the game?

A: It's very important that we want everyone to be able to see what's going on. That's why there isn't much debri when the game is done; we don't want the clutter. There'll probably be more of this stuff in single player rather than multiplayer. We might even have an option to turn this sort of thing on and off. In the final product there'll be some really cool stuff.

Q: Will the dark templar be changed - have they changed - especially considering all the flak you've received?

A: The dark templar is still a unit that we're going to go over. What I'd like to do is go over it and make the old dark templar and maybe have people vote on it. I can't promise that but it's still in the process of being worked. And we're still working on our cloaking mechanic so that will have an impact on the design as well.

Q: Have you ever thought of a fourth race based on artistically?

A: No comment.

Q: Are you still creating units?

A: Everytime we have a finished race we end up redoing half of it. I'm sure that once we're in Beta you good people will show us the error of our ways and we'll make new units to fix those. And of course we'll end up patching it for ten years .

Q: Will there be a change in the Thor (and other big units) art for attack?

A: Yes, right now the thor is doing something different from what we started with. We used to have seige animations for him. But once the design team tells us this is what he is going to do we'll create something new.

Q: Will there still be one theme per race and will you be writing more?

A: Yes, we'll be writing more music and each race will have it's own.

Q: The new seige tank model doesn't look quite as meaty - why not?

A: Right now it has a plasma gun and so we wanted to get away from a barrel. Everyone seems decently happy with it right now.

Q: What's the flow of communication between the design and the artists like?

A: It works both ways. The designers come to us and tell us they want this. And we wanted a giant robot (the thor) and they're like - what are we going to do with this.

Q: How's the art direction for Battle.net coming?

A: We're not talking about it much right now but we're definitely doing more art for it - we'll kind of see where it goes.

Q: How many cinematics are planned for SC2?

A: We haven't decided on a final number but it's between 1 and 1,000,000. From what I've seen they look very good and you guys will like them very much!

Nice info.  It's nifty to see them alude to a fourth race or the Xel'Naga.  While I don't think SC2 will have more than 3 playable races (the core game anyways, expansions who knows), I'm certain that with the events of Brood War, we'll be seeing some sort of outside influence from some new power.

Theres bit and pieces of new information from GameSpots writeup as well.  No screenshots, so here is the writeup:

**********  BEGIN GAMESPOT

"PARIS--While the big announcement at this weekend's 2008 Blizzard Worldwide Invitational was the announcement of Diablo III, strategy fans had plenty to cheer, as the show floor contained a section specifically devoted to StarCraft II. Hundreds of PCs were on-hand, allowing attendees to be among the first in the world to play this highly anticipated sequel and, judging by the the attendance in the StarCraft II section, it seems attendees weren't disappointed at all. We had a chance to spend some time with the game as well and, though there wasn't a lot that was new in the game since our last look back in May, every chance to play StarCraft II is an enjoyable one.

The show floor demo featured three single player modes (each against a different faction), with the single player Zerg battle set to "easy" difficulty and the vs. Protoss and vs. Terran missions set to "medium" difficulty. There was also a multiplayer mode that pitted you against a random opponent from somewhere on the show floor LAN.

Though it had been a while since we'd played the original StarCraft, jumping into StarCraft II is an immediately familiar experience. We spent the majority of our time with the Terran faction and while the tech tree seems similar to where it's been for a while, Blizzard was quick to point out (during an afternoon press conference) that the tech trees and units for the game are still in flux. Case in point, the Thor unit, a massive mech that is one of the largest units available to the Terrans. In our May look at the Terran faction, Thor units were being built by SCV; in the build here in Paris, Thor units are now pumped out from the Factory, along with other ground units like the siege tank.

As Blizzard senior art director Sam Didier explained in the StarCraft II press conference, the Thor unit has undergone some significant changes since its inception. For example, early in its implementation, the Thor had a lockdown ability, similar to that of the siege tank. Now, the Thor can attack both air and land units, but does not lock itself down when attacking. According to Didier, the Thor’s final capabilities, like many StarCraft II units, still need to be locked down and will undergo more development as the game continues to come along.

We were surprised to see our vespene gas reserves deplete so quickly during our matches. As Blizzard explains it, it’s an intentional choice to add another degree of macro management to the game. In effect, you quickly run out of the two gas reserves you begin with, and are forced to explore the map and expand your territory. That said, like every other aspect of the game, how quickly vespene is mined is still to be finalized. While we can see how it encourages exploration, it can also be frustrating to watch as two vespene reserves are depleted while plenty of crystal is still left for mining.

Visually, StarCraft II is a treat regardless of which race you’re playing. The 3D engine that runs the game is impressive indeed; at once modern enough to render the different faction units with a tremendous amount of detail, while still staying very true to the game’s clean, bold design. You can zoom in to check out the details of your units, and you really get a feel for the amount of care the unit designers have taken with each unit. The construction animations alone are impressive--as your SCV builds up a barracks, your Zerg larva morphs, or your Protoss probe warps in a forge--there are lots of little details that are sure to elicit a smile.

The game’s sound is coming along nicely too. Though some units share the same voice track (such as the siege tank and the maurader) all of them portray that same sense of humor that has come to be a hallmark for Blizzard (we’re especially big fans of the Thor voice actor, who’s doing his hammiest Arnold Schwareneggar impression in the game).

It seems that StarCraft II has plenty of more evolution to complete before it’s ready for prime time, though we can safely say that the game we played on the show floor today was a lot of fun and true to the original’s spirit. We look forward to bringing you more reports on how the came is shaping up in the coming months. "


******** END GAMESPOT

If any of you guys spot any videos, post em here.  I'd definitely like to see some of the latest if there is anything out there.