On October 07 2013 21:13 GameHeart wrote: Starcraft is not so simple. So we need to look at more complex sports that are constantly trying to make their sport more accessible to the uninitiated. By adopting this strategy perhaps we can boost viewership of Starcraft as an eSport and inspire growth and sponsorship. One example of a complex sport that is doing a fantastic job of using these types of elements to improve the viewing experience, particularly for new viewers, is sailing. The America’s Cup has taken huge strides in making their sport easy to understand. They recently posted a video about this system, and you can check it out here:
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Oh god, that highlighted puck was absolutely LOATHED in Canada. It was never incorporated into any Canadian broadcast because we hated it.
Congrats on making your funding goal, GH really makes the tournaments that use it stand out, I hope you can successfully "open source" it to the community.
@iHiro - I wanted to acknowledge that I have read your post but I don't have time just this moment to respond to it in depth. Thank you for taking the time to put so much thought into this, I will try to give a more detailed response as soon as I can.
@Archerofaiur - The main difference between GameHeart Classic and GameHeart Light in their structure is that GameHeart Light uses real observers to spectate games, and GameHeart Classic uses actual players that just don't have any units to spectate games.
Basically real observers currently cannot interact directly with the game. Meaning they cannot 'trigger' events in the custom map code. So I cannot detect when they press a button or click on a spot on the map using custom map code. That means features that require their direct interaction like drawing tools will not work.
Now believe it or not this actually was possible last year and early this year, but Blizzard changed the way observers function so that it is no longer possible. Obviously they didn't change them just to ruin my fun, they had their own reasons for why it had to happen. But I am currently holding out hope that they will change referees so they can interact with game code (I have actually asked them to do this). It's a longshot, but if they do it I will be able to combine both versions of GameHeart into one super lightweight super powerful version.
That said I am surprised you liked the drawing tools so much, I found that virtually nobody was ever using them. I am quite proud of them to be honest because it took a long time to get them to look as good as they do and to work as smoothly as they do.
On October 07 2013 22:06 Ender985 wrote: I don't think adding 'visual effects' to units that are not originally part of the game (example provided was making stalkers feet glow with available blink) would be a good idea, since you'd be adding 'game-like' elements that are not really part of the game.
Can someone explain why it would be a bad thing to add 'game-like' elements to that aren't part of the vanilla game to the observer experience? I don't know that glowing feet is the right way to go about it, but having a visual indication on each stalker when they are able to blink seems superior to a cooldown icon on the selection.
Right now I'm thinking about blink stalker micro in engagements. The player is constantly trying to blink back stalkers once their shields are (almost) down so that their shields can have time to regenerate. In situations like this, the viewer could easily see which stalkers can blink back and can better appreciate the micro and timings involved. I think that shield powering on/off effects would further enhance the experience.
You can't tell which stalkers are savable (because of blink) and which are not when every stalker in the battle shares a single UI icon. Taking the information out of the UI and putting it back in the game seems to make for a more effective and immersive viewing experience. I'm sure that getting the visual indicators and effects right is a very hard problem, but I don't understand the argument that it would be a bad thing to do.
I was thinking maybe two glowing dots (in the color of the player who owns the stalker) that appear on the front and back of each stalker. If one dot is lit up it means the stalker has the blink upgrade but it is on cooldown, if both dots are lit up it means that the stalker is currently able to blink. I do not know if this is possible within reason (everything has a cost). I don't even think this would be all that difficult to do if players were allowed to see it, but making it observers only is the trick. I mean I think it is possible, but a lot more resource intensive because it has to be done through map code instead of the data editor.
Can the referee's still change gamespeed? They used to be able to do that, so in a sense they can already interfere in the game (it was mostly by mistake tho, and that incident of a pro game played on fast instead of faster resulted from an hotkey misclick) unfortunately i suppose you can't change their ability to move the speed slider into something useful, being a menu change instead of a game change,(assuming they still can do it) right?
Everybody liked the drawing tools i think ^^, it is just unfortunate that most pro-streams couldn't find a place for it except in some analisys corner (i remember NASL/WCS using them, if i'm not wrong?)
On October 11 2013 09:43 GameHeart wrote: @Archerofaiur - The main difference between GameHeart Classic and GameHeart Light in their structure is that GameHeart Light uses real observers to spectate games, and GameHeart Classic uses actual players that just don't have any units to spectate games.
Basically real observers currently cannot interact directly with the game. Meaning they cannot 'trigger' events in the custom map code. So I cannot detect when they press a button or click on a spot on the map using custom map code. That means features that require their direct interaction like drawing tools will not work.
Now believe it or not this actually was possible last year and early this year, but Blizzard changed the way observers function so that it is no longer possible. Obviously they didn't change them just to ruin my fun, they had their own reasons for why it had to happen. But I am currently holding out hope that they will change referees so they can interact with game code (I have actually asked them to do this). It's a longshot, but if they do it I will be able to combine both versions of GameHeart into one super lightweight super powerful version.
That said I am surprised you liked the drawing tools so much, I found that virtually nobody was ever using them. I am quite proud of them to be honest because it took a long time to get them to look as good as they do and to work as smoothly as they do.
I was really surprised too. I wonder if it was just that castors didn't use them as much so people didn't know they were there. Did someone give a reason why they didn't like them or were they just not aware?
For me, having the most amount of useful screen space possible is the most visually appealing. So I would like a minimalist UI, meaning the option to enable only essential information for the observer, while keeping the UI as slick and easy to read as possible.
EPT
