SC2Mapster

Swarm Launch Live

Hi everyone, as I said in a previous announcement, I was able to attend the Swarm launch event live, in California. This post will simply be my reflections of the live event; essentially the things behind the curtain, as I'm sure most of you probably watched the live stream. If you haven't gotten a chance to see the livestream, you can catch all of the videos on the Official Starcraft Twitch page.

My day began at 6am, getting ready to head to the Phoenix airport for 10am to California for this launch event. Once I arrived, I met [all for the first time, might I add,] Temp0, ChanmanV, LivinPink, Kevin Knocke, and Derrick from ONOG in the hotel lobby. For the next hour or so, we just chatted in the hotel restaurant while we waited for the event to begin. At this point, it's about 1:30pm, and the great pug from Blizzard met us outside the lobby with a shuttle and a couple of other community figures (Clutch, Russelo, Barbie from NASL, Amber Dalton from Twitch, JP McDaniel, and a few others), which we all boarded to head to the event, however not before Mr.Bitter and Rotterdam got some footage of us all getting on and a few interviews. In addition, Temp0, at the request of Amber from Twitch, did a small verse of one of his parody songs on the bus (he's way too good, someone needs to give this kid a deal)!

Now is when the interesting and important stuff starts for you. Again, most of my day consisted of walking around, meeting/talking to community figures and Blizzard employees, and just generally hanging out and watching the event unfold, but I will do the best to stick to a timeline! Back to the story... We arrived at the Blizzard campus after a relatively short shuttle ride from the hotel, where we were greeted with an awesome Kerrigan poster (as seen above) right outside of the registration point (yes, we had to register, make sure we were on the proper list, show ID, and get an awesome badge to have access, this was a special VIP event). While we waited for Blizzard to go snag some badges, we were directed back outside, where they had boxes and boxes of pizza hut and a few huge heroes (just big sandwiches), cookies, drinks, and lots more. In addition to the food, they had a few boxes of StarCraft: Risk out, as well as a few Blizzard poker sets for us to play with. Word of warning, never play Gretorp in poker, you're going to lose, -_-;.

Once we were done eating and got our registration taken care of, we were able to enter the live stream room; it was set relatively dark with lights focused on K[9] (the Day9 and Husky duo), and had probably 50 chairs or so, set in front of a large projector screen, for us to hangout and watch the stream live. I walked in and greeted Husky, who looked completely exhausted (this was only the middle of the afternoon, he had been up since 5am casting games, and still had another 10 hours to go). The next few hours I spent walking back and forth, talking to employees and figures outside, and watching the stream inside. Although, it was pretty awesome getting to watch some of the community videos, like the /r/Starcraft one by Leafeator, the one from the NASL, and Gretorp's commercial, and getting to see their reactions to them. It's like watching a movie for the second time, you know what's going to happen, so you're just looking to make sure the other person is enjoying it, haha. Anyway, not much to say here; at about 8pm we all made our way over to the Irvine Spectrum (a large outdoor mall for the area).

Clutch and I used our amazing navigation skills to get from the parking garage to the right place in the Spectrum, however it wasn't very hard to find, as there was a giant purple, glowing stage right next to a ferris wheel. Again, I spent this time walking around a bit and talking (if you couldn't tell, I love to network), but I also stopped in a few stores. The Barnes n Noble there actually had another Kerrigan poster, and put a bunch of Flashpoint and other Starcraft novels up out front to make some sales. There were also employees from the local stores handing out coupons (man, do I love pretzels), etc. Due to the fact that I had an awesome badge, I was able to get into the VIP area, which was literally right up on the front of the stage. From about 10pm to midnight I hungout with Carbots and his wife, and Traysent, (all really awesome people,) as we watched the EG.Suppy and ROOTVibe showmatch, just before the final countdown. Day9 and Husky also interviews Carbots, just before showing his animated hots trailer, as well as Robert Clotworthy (Jim Raynor's voice actor), and Chris Sigaty. You can catch all these interviews from the Twitch channel as well.

Toward the end of the event, we all counted down to midnight, similar to you would on New Years Eve, with the 12:00 marker launching confetti, lots of lights, and the ferris wheel lighting up purple and yellow, which was a really cool sight to see. The night ended with us getting lost, missing the shuttle, and Traysent saving the day. Once we all got a special present from the Blizzard employees, I headed back to the hotel with Carbots and his wife, Temp0, and ChanmanV to conclude the night. The day ended like it began, just like an ironic movie, hanging out in the lobby. Of course, my flight back was at 6:45am, so while they all slept, I just sat and waited for my flight home, caught a shuttle to the airport at 5:30am, and got home around 10am after all said and done... and then of course, after passing out, I had to play some Heart of the Swarm!

Heart of the Swarm Game

I won't spoil anything within the Swarm campaign, I'll just my very brief, general thoughts on the game. Honestly, I thought this was one of the best storylines of any Blizzard game, to date. That may be quite a bit, as it's competing with the campaigns/stories of the entire Diablo series, the Warcraft RTS series, and SC1, BW, and WoL. I just feel like Swarm was exactly what I needed, personally, out of the Starcraft series, at this point in time. It set up Legacy of the Void for a perfect conclusion to the series. Once you complete Swarm, I feel it's pretty obvious the direction Legacy will take the series to an end and it gives me nerd chills thinking about it, let alone the nerd chills I got at several points through the Swarm campaign as we met new and old characters alike. I'll give a much more in-depth write up at some point in time, once everyone has completed the game. If anyone needs catching up on the lore of Starcraft as a whole, I joined Clutch on NASL.tv to give a rundown of the story so far, up until Heart of the Swarm, including some of our own speculation. We'll be joining together next month to do a follow-up lore show about Heart of the Swarm and speculation about the future as well.

I hope you enjoyed y write-up of the experience I had at the live Swarm launch. If not, hopefully at least you got to see some cool pictures and videos, and got some insight into what goes on at Blizzard events. I got a chance to meet some really cool people (you all know who you are, ;) ) and genuinely had a blast. It was a nice change of pace for me, as I'm graduating from university pretty soon, and have been so focused on completing that. The next big Blizzard event at this point will be BlizzCon 2013, see you there!

w00t, they used my question! /flex

Vengeance by Blizzard

As I'm sure, most of you are aware, the lovely Kevin Johnson (Cloaken) was joined by Dustin Browder, Chris Metzen, and Jeff Chamberlain for the Vengeance event, earlier this afternoon, to showcase the Heart of the Swarm pre-release trailer, as well as show off a show match between Grubby and crazymovING (casted by Apollo and TotalBiscuit). Below is the Vengeance trailer, created by Blizzard's always impressive cinematics team.

Mercenaries in Space: Mining Company by maticpl

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Gameplay in Mercs is fairly straight forward. After picking your hero, you are being thrown to this place, called Mercs HUB. It is your main base of operations. You can refill your supplies here (stimpacks, first aid kits) and also buy new weapons and armor. But most important thing is in HUB Terminal. This is the big computer near the entrance. Be sure to check it out. You can save your hero there (to have your stats and items transferred to next episode, or just to make a break between missions).

After you become familiar with HUB, it is time to go on a mission. You can select mission using HUB Terminal. I suggest choosing missions having acceptable level requirements (you can check them by clicking "View Description" button). When all players agree on which mission they want to play, you can head to the exit. After boarding the dropship and clicking button "Go to mission" you will find yourselves on a real mercs mission.

SCU: Chronicles of Fate Prologue by Upheaval Arts

The first installment to StarCraft Universe has finally been released in the form of a single player mission, which allows you to begin the storyline and learn how the game functions. SCU has received quite a bit of publicity since it's inception, with Blizzard's Cease and Desist order, due to a simple misunderstanding. Regardless, that set the hype for the project years ago when it first began.

Queen of Blades campaign by Telenil, et al.

Telenil and his partners have released the last installment of the SC1 campaign, so you may now play the entire SC1/BW campaign within the SC2 engine. Enjoy the nostalgia, :).

Star Tools beta is live for those that opted in.

Music Galaxy by QueenGambit

Music Galaxy is a proof of concept map; it simulates a piano keyboard. When the map initializes, 53 Engineer Bays are spawned and arranged like keys on a piano, and clicking those bays will play the corresponding notes. All 53 piano sound clips were digitally recorded and imported onto the map.

The video below is a live demonstration of Music Galaxy- Can you guess each song played in the video?

Make sure to check out the thread here!

Rebirth of the Swarm by CrainyCreations

The full-length feature of RotS has gone live today. The machinima video comes in at a whopping 60-minutes in length and initially began during the beta stages of Wings of Liberty (putting this at 2.5 years of blood, sweat, and tears!). Crainy suggests viewing this movie with headphones for the best experience possible. Go grab some popcorn, sit back, relax, and enjoy a [free] hour-long movie! If you enjoy it, don't forget to like the video.

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The movie will begin just before the events of Starcraft 2 and will focus on one of the first full scale attack from the zerg on a terran planet since their four year long disappearance.

Most of the movie will be set on the attacked planet, "Cron II", which is controlled by the Umoja Protectorate, the second biggest Terran faction next to the Dominion. Cron II poses as a tactically important planet for the Protectorate, seeing how the planet is rich with giant mineral fields. However, as a desert planet, Cron II only provides rough living conditions, which causes it beeing populated mainly be miners and the marines to defend them.

Overall, Cron II is not ready to hold off a full scale Zerg attack on their own, so in an desperate act of seeking help, they send out a distress call into space - which is received by the Protoss mothership Tasiis.

BlasterBots by DuckyTheDuck

Does anyone remember the old Bomberman game for SNES? I can't even begin to explain how many hours I spent playing the "campaign" of that game, let alone the amoutn of time I played multiplayer against my brothers and friends... Good times... This map project is pretty straightforward, it's a tribute to the Bomberman game I was speaking of; strategically lay bombs and kill your opponents [and blocks]! In addition, feel free to read the interview Blizzard conducted with him about this map.

-The Thing- [Revival] by Vicboy

What started as a soon-to-be-dead experimental map in Early 2011 suddenly turned into a Top 50 Played, extremely underdeveloped, map in the Late 2012. (Literally, I just woke up to find out my old map is being played by hundreds)

The game is inspired by two things: A WarCraft III map called Survive the Night by CreativeStrats and the 1982 film: John Carpenter's The Thing.

The game works like this: You start alone in a far away secluded station and one of your crew is a deadly monster disguised as a human. You need to group up to defeat it but you can only communicate to the ones you're near at. So, you have to look around for a team but how do you know the ones you meet are not it? How can you trust him? How can they trust you? There are items scattered around the station to aid you. Arm yourself and kill the Thing before it escapes to Earth.

The video is a fan-made guide to playing as The Thing.

Be sure to check out the final Rebirth of the Swarm trailer, a fan-made machinima. The full video is slated for release later this month and will be approximately 60 minutes in length!

Xultion by Vamppanik666

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The basic set-up of the map is complete the questing components are being implimented little by little more terrain has been added(not seen in video) and more quest features! also not seen in video! The video here is a newer look at what we are working on! We are looking for script writers.. we will be looking at working on the MERC Team soon so we need some writers for some ideas on the prologue!

War4craft : the Battle Realms by Sanguinax

Similar to SC2BW by MavercK, Sanguinax has set out to recreate the Warcraft III experience on the Starcraft II engine. Check out a sample gameplay video below:

Blizzard just opened up 12 new mapping forums on the Battle.net SC2 website, be sure to check them out! In addition, for those of you waiting for Blizzard All-Stars, looks like they're hiring for a Lead Designer!

Kobold Tribes by Qancakes

This is a little outdated but certainly worth a feature. Blizzard interview Qancakes about his map, Kobold Tribes, as seen here.

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Kobold Tribes is a team-based survival RPG in which two teams of up to five players each command a Kobold unit and work together to defeat the enemy tribe. At the start of each game, the Kobold players find themselves in a forested landscape that must be overcome before the enemy team can be dealt with. Kobolds can cut down trees, hunt wild animals, gather berries, and engage in quests, pooling their resources to build structures, cook food, and arm themselves for the inevitable battle. As time passes, day leads to night, at which point the tribe must stick together near a campfire or freeze.

Feel free to read through the interview (thanks for the shout out!) and/or check out his map! It's in the same format as the good ol' Island Troll Tribes maps that I personally loved.

Lots of good news coming within the next few days/week(s). I haz Beta Keys and a cool sneak preview at the Custom Observer UI features for HotS, which I'll be highlighting soon enough. As far as how to get a Beta key, stay tuned, we'll have announcements soon.

Station Control by Soapninja

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My goal with this game was to create a MOBA that is easy to learn for new players and strategically satisfying for experts. I did away with things like items, shops, and XP and created something closer to what you'd find at a video arcade...if video arcades had MOBA games. Instead of a ridiculous amount of heroes and archetypes, I wanted to start this game with a handful of well-designed classes that feel valuable and unique. Instead of trying to destroy enemy towers, your goal is to capture them like you would in games like Arathi Basin, TF2, and Battlefield; the longer you control a tower, the more points you gain.

Don't let the simplicity fool you though, there's a lot of strategy to this game. In addition to the capture and control gameplay, there are also powerful Team Buffs that randomly spawn during the game. The power up locations are located away from the control points, but if a player grabs a power up, it will buff their entire team. This often creates a risk vs reward scenario: Do I leave my team to grab a powerup that will help us later, or do I stay with them now to help attack or defend? In addition, nydus worms frequently spawn around the map spewing out zerg units. If a team is not careful, they can be overwhelmed by the amount of units swarming the map. This creates a chaotic environment that requires excellent teamwork and decision making to succeed.

Station Control games also differ with most other MOBA titles in yet another way: The games last between 10-15 minutes. You can fit in a couple games during your lunch break, or play for hours on the weekend. Leavers are less of a problem because they don't have to wait for 30 minutes to start a new game. I also decided to make the game score only visible at the end of the match, so if players are tempted to leave but want to see how many kills, deaths, or captures they had; they need to wait a few minutes until the match is officially over.

I hope that you all give the game a chance and that you enjoy it. Personally, I think it's got a lot to offer.

StarCraft: Subjection by Gradius

Our good friend Gradius from SCLegacy has taken it upon himself to create a fully voice-acted, 8 mission singleplayer campaign. Subjection will have 4 difficulty levels (similar to the WoL Campaign) and has been released on the NA Server. As of current, the voice-acting is being completed, as is the final mission, but feel free to test the current series and give him some feedback! Below, you can see what looks like the introduction to the campaign...

If you're wondering how or why a particular map is featured by Blizzard, I'd suggest reading their explanation. In addition, don't forget to watch Episode 7 of my Blizzard All-Stars Informational Series!

Prototype TD by Stexen

Take Squadron TD and mix in a little bit of Nexus Wars, throw in some new, dynamic features, and the result was Prototype TD. The complexity of the game will scare away most newcomers with it's high learning curve, but those that persevere (through both the learning curve and Justin Bieber) will have a great time on a unique map.