Fansite Q&A Session.

Our site as well as many other fansites has been chosen to participate in a Q&A session with Karune. We will be able to send in 15 questions to Karune. One restriction is that there will be nothing about single player and Battlenet 2.0.

Deadline is March 31st. POST AWAY!

 

What is going to be the maximum amount of players per game, per game style (Melee, Team, UMS, CTF, etc.)?

 

Can you tell us the recent build for:
- Swarm Guardian
- Corruptor
- Ultralisk.

 

Doesn't really leave much?

 

Can the answer be a picture? Because an update on the lurker model would be nice.

• Do air units in general have larger sight radii than ground units to reflect that they have a greater scope on the things below?

• Do units appear on the side of their production building closest to the rally point?

• Have you considered putting the centre of the vision "circle" in front of the unit to make it see more in the direction it is facing? It would make early game scouting more interesting especially when two opposing scouts head to the same start location - the one behind would see the first one but not the other way round, and the player behind could rule out one location without the other player knowing it. It is also logical that units have better perception of what is in front of them than behind.

 

I missed this one, went to the countdown topic first...
- Do we still have to swap disks after installing, or can every mission and map be played from the hd?
- What is the current fate of axed units like the Mine Drone? Are they still being developed further for use in regular games, or are they only available for custum maps made in the editor?
- Will there be a limit to the number of customs that mapmakers can put on their maps? WC3 suffered from severe slowdown on most computers after adding a lot of customs. Some kind of warning systen would be nice.
- Will all maps perform equally well on all computers? In other games like WC3 small -4 player- maps could be played in full detail, while larger maps -10 or more- got laggy. Is there anything done to prevent this?

 

1. Are there any official plans at the current time to release limited editions of Starcraft 2 (any of the 3 versions) for sale along side the standard editions?

2. Will the map creator have the option to use user created sounds as part of map triggers and also to replace the standard unit voices/sounds?

3. Will the replays of multiplayer games have options to save them in various standard formats so they can be exported and played in general/standard media players?

4. Will the results screen at the end of multiplayer games be customisable as to only show the results each player wants to see?

 

I can already awnser your second question for you. It was already possible to use custom unit sounds in the warcraft 3 editor. I'm not sure if it was karune who said it, but a blizzard employee said that everything that you could do with the warcraft 3 editor, would be possible in the starcraft 2 editor. So yes, you can use custom unit sounds. As for the replay quistion, I believe they already said that there would be such an option. But you would have to check the battle.net forums an qa batches to be sure.

 

Karune, your favorite race, go.

 

What are the many different terrain sets that will be available for standard multiplayer maps? Snow, Jungle, etc...??

 

No. It has been discussed here that it's impossible even at a theoretical level. You can't get any closer than recording what you see and playing it back. Unless it's possible to record the whole map and then play back the ~40k x 30k resolution video

 

I thought that he was talking about recording what the spectator was looking at, not the actual game. Or recording what the player sees. That should be possible.

 

Recording is of course possible, but he used the word export, which makes it clear that he would like the whole replay file, as is, converted into a media file. Which is impossible to do if he still wants to retain the ability to scroll, unless, as I've said, you convert the game in a fashion that the whole map with all the action is preserved, which would result in a... well, if we take a standard 1024x768 resolution with that view covering 1/16 of an extremely small map, that'd give you a video file with a resolution of 4096x3072. I think even a quad core would die under that, and these are only numbers using an extremely small map, which will never occcur in competitive play, if we can assume SC2 follow will vaguely follow the SC1 pattern of map choice. Of course there's the hud that'd get cut and everything but... long story short, imo it will never happen.

 

Could you elaborate on the "mini-campaigns" for other races that will be present in each installment?
ie A mini Protoss/Zerg campaign in the Terran Wings of Liberty campaign.

EDIT: Oh, no single player questions...

 

I thought that already was the case in SC? It is in WC3 for sure though, so we already know the answer to that one.

 

It isn't the case with workers though. You know, what we touched upon in one of the threads. Yeah, that question actually refers to workers...

 

Hmmm... The pressure's on. Someone remind me to comment on which questions I think are the best before the 31st.

I can only really think of one right now; What are the required specs for Beta?

 

Hmm, thats nice. Ill try to come up with a few questions.

1. Why was the armor system from the original SC choosed instead of the WC3 one? Is it just a matter of being "original"?

2. Are there any "random features" in SC2 - like miss chances up the clift? Or are you just unable to see units being placed "higher"?

I second this question:

"Originally Posted by kuvasz:
Do units appear on the side of their production building closest to the rally point?"

Because as GMG doesnt know (Im very proud to know something GMG doesnt) that the units in SC would enter the production buildign at one place, which has resulted in many funny features (epsecially in pro level):
Like mineplacement which kills the unit, pylonblocking so the first Siege Tank is blocked and easy can be killed etc.

 

Are the terran air units at the moment as powerful as the other air units on the other races?
Are the terran air units better at fighting air units or ground units?
Thanks!

 

Are there any plans to bring back infestation mechanics? The Infestor's current "Spawn Infested Marines" ability seems to be there as a placeholder rather than a definite ability.

Does the Nighthawk still use gas/minerals for its abilities, or has it gone back to using mana?