Hello everyone! I am starting this blog as a way to keep you guys updated on the progress of the GameHeart Redesigned project, and also to get your ideas on how GameHeart can be improved.
Before going into what I am working on specifically I want to talk about the structure of the project and GameHeart itself for the future. When I announced this project the plan was to remake GameHeart in a way that it uses real observers to spectate games as opposed to players that have no units. While this provides immense advantages it also comes with some drawbacks which I did outline in the IndieGoGo project page. So what does this mean for GameHeart? For the time being it means I will be maintaining two versions of GameHeart. The older version, which uses players that have no units to spectate can be found in the arcade as “GHClassic.” The newer version, which uses real observers to spectate will be found as “GHLight” once it becomes available. I have hope that someday Blizzard may make a change that will allow us to get the best of both worlds in a single map, but for now we have to work with what we’ve got!
During this project I will not only create the new version of GameHeart, but I will also overhaul the older version. They will use the same structure so that mod files are interchangeable between them, that way when I want to add new logos I only have to update a single mod file and both versions of GameHeart will be update automatically. Lucky for me, Blizzard recently added a lot of functionality to mod files and the editor to make this possible.
Really quickly I want to go over the primary differences between these two different versions of GameHeart. I hope tournaments will find that either one suits their needs. I created this comparison chart to help.
It is important to remember that this chart is only to describe the differences between the two different versions of GameHeart. Both versions will have features like team/league logos, production icons, stronger team colors and upgrade notifications.
What I am working on now -
Logos mod
So the first step in this process will be to construct a mod file which manages the nearly 250 logos for teams and tournaments that are currently in GameHeart which will function in both versions. However, I also want to make this mod file a general resource for mod and map makers. So if for example IcculusLizard were to decide he wanted to add team logos to Peepmode, or if Payne wants to add logos to Star Strikers they could do so without having to create and maintain a database of logos when I have already done so. I am not sure what other custom games are out there that can make good use of team and tournament logos, but I will also make the system that displays the logos on the map a separate mod as well so if they just want to use that and don’t need the team and league logos they can do so without adding any unnecessary extra filesize to their maps.
Because I have formatted most of these logos already (you can view the list here) I can focus primarily on the actual functionality of the system. Something that has been a problem with logos in the past is their level of transparency. The logos are actually a special type of 3D model inside of the map that seem unaffected by the usual methods you would use to control their transparency. While I cannot make any promises on this front something I will be doing during this part of the project is exploring a lot of new options for trying to gain more dynamic control over the transparency of logos as they display on the map. What that hopefully means, is allowing tournaments to decide for themselves how transparent they want the logos on the maps to be.
I also want to refine how map makers/tournaments can select not only where to put the logos on their maps but also to determine their rotation to make them look as good as possible as quickly as possible.
STC mod
I am also running tests on the Stronger Team Colors mod system which will allow STC to only display for observers and leave players unaffected. Hopefully this will encourage tournaments to seriously consider using STC as I feel it dramatically improves the readability of the game on web streams, particularly the ZvZ matchup. This functionality is only possible because of the amazing work of ‘Renee2islga’ on his GAx3 mod which adds many functions to the editor which are not necessarily natively supported. Renee is a regular on SC2mapster and the Battle.net forums and is constantly producing new content that helps all SC2 modders.
Unfortunately because of the nature of the work around Renee uses to add this functionality to the editor it does not really work with observers naturally. This adds a little complication to the STC mod part of the project but we will still be able to make it work.
Okay so that is it for the custom map portion of the project for this blog. The next thing I want to talk about is interface files.
Interface files
After speaking to my partner Ahli who is primarily responsible for coding the interface files we will be releasing, we have decided to try to release one every two weeks for the next two months. That means four new high quality interface files in total by the end of the project. They will range in style and function, but they will all be usable whether you choose to use the new GameHeart or normal custom games for spectating.
My personal goal for GameHeart has always to make an interface that is as unobtrusive as possible. It is becoming quite popular to add as much information as you possibly can to an interface, but that has never actually been my goal. While the amount of information available in the GameHeart interface has increased over time, I have always tried to temper that by having it only visible temporarily or constraining the information to singular contained spaces so it does not make the interface feel too complex. Or at least that has been my hope.
At times in the past I have had many complaints about my decision to move the resource numbers to the bottom of the screen. I have been very resistant to calls to move them back to the top right, and those of you who hold that hope will be disappointed with this first interface we release. I am still firmly of the belief that the number one priority for these interfaces must be to contain the UI information to one area as much as possible to allow the game to shine and to ‘breathe’ in a way. I want to free the top of the screen from UI elements so the game feels more open and less claustrophobic. Do you remember the first time you watched a football game on a high definition TV? My goal with GameHeart has been to create that feeling with Starcraft.
With that in mind I have taken all UI information including the production tab and contained it in the bottom left of the screen alongside the minimap. I have given the numbers a solid background to make them easier to read. The unit selection panel is simplified, though we have found in testing that many things about the unit selection panel are unchangeable. Perhaps we just do not have enough knowledge yet of how the interface files function, but the unit selection panel appears to be a blizzard locked feature which greatly limits what we can do with it.
So that means keep in mind the following image is a mock-up and not a screenshot. The final interface absolutely will look different, but this image represents my general goal for the interface. Clicking on the image should bring up a larger version.
So within two weeks we hope to make this interface file available to tournaments so they can start using in their broadcasts immediately. I have already shown it to several casters, observers and organizations and have received mostly positive feedback. I know it is not perfect for everyone, but by the end of this project I hope at least one of the four interfaces we release will fit your needs. So if you are not happy with this one do not worry we will get something you like out there.
For those of you unfamiliar with Ahli, he is a stellar custom map maker who has helped me with my project on countless occasions. His expertise with the interface files is a huge boon to the GameHeart project.
What I want from you -
Alright so we have talked about the structure of the project and what both myself and Ahli are working on at the moment. But I also want to crowd source some ideas a bit with this blog, and hopefully you guys are willing to humor me.
Let's talk about UIs
There is a great article a friend linked me to once about UI design in games. You can read it here. It talks about the different types of UI elements you see in games and how they work. Even if you don’t read the article it is worth visiting the link to see the small chart at the bottom that describes the four different types of UI elements.
In Starcraft we use a lot of non-diegetic interface elements to display information to the viewer. While these are great for feeding you information, they tend to be very obstructive and take up a lot of valuable screen real estate. In GameHeart I try to make use of spatial interface elements (like the team/tournaments logos on the maps, or the icons that appear above buildings showing you what they are producing) to limit the need for these non-diegetic elements.
One way I think we can improve Starcraft spectating is by studying other sports to see how they use these spatial elements to help viewers understand what is going on. An obvious example is the first down line in American football. But the big sports like basketball and football are quite self explanatory. They are easy for a new viewer to sit down and watch because they for the most part immediately understand what is happening. Those guys are trying to kick the ball into that goal, or those guys are trying to put the ball through that hoop. These are simple concepts, and while the games themselves are deep they are easy to jump into as a viewer.
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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With this in mind, if you have any ideas on spatial interface elements we can add to GameHeart that will make improve the spectating experience particularly for new view please let me know! What do expert players see that a new player might not that we can show them using custom maps?
The unit selection window
The production icons over buildings were added because in the original version of GameHeart I removed the unit selection panel entirely, which prevented the observer from seeing what a building was producing. Eventually when GomTV was considering using GameHeart for the GSTL they requested that I add the unit selection panel back in, because it was too dramatic a change for them. It is now my goal to go back and try to completely eliminate the need for the unit selection window. To do this we need to consider all of the information we get from it, determine what is ‘necessary’ and what can be discarded for spectating.
No matter how trivial a piece of information is, there will always be people who feel like it is very important. Unfortunately it really is impossible to push the spectating experience of SC2 forward without rustling a few feathers. But I want to start a discussion about this topic in particular anyways. So I am going to make a list of information we get from the unit selection window which is not available already elsewhere.
-The name of a unit. (We really don’t need this) -Precise unit hitpoints, shield and energy information. -Unit upgrade levels (GameHeart maps and interface files provide this elsewhere already) -Unit rank -Unit kills -Unit properties (robotic, biological etc) -Unit cargo (what is inside a medivac or a bunker) -Unit production (GameHeart maps eliminate this need) -Unit buffs -Unit abilities (like blink, this is normally in the command panel but most modern spectator UIs group it with the selection panel. These are actually also visible in the upgrades tab of the leader panel but do not give unit specific information)
Am I missing anything?
So what of this list can we eliminate entirely, and what can we replace with spatial or diegetic UI elements? So for example if we look at unit abilities, we know that many units have visual indications that they possess an upgrade or ability. Banelings roll when they get their speed upgrade instead of walk. Zerglings get wings. Marines get shields etc. These are actually diegetic elements but I am open to spatial elements as well. One idea might be to add visual indications for all abilities in the game that not only show that a unit has an ability, but also that they have enough energy or it is off cooldown so they can use it. So maybe if stalkers have blink upgrade their feet glow. If we can come up with ideas like this for every ability and make them work then we can eliminate the need for the ability icons entirely for spectators.
Another idea might be to have a number appear above a units head when it drops below 20 hitpoints so you can see how close it was when it barely got away. Eliminating the need for precise HP numbers.
I want to hear your ideas so I can steal them! The more information we can put into the game as diegetic or spatial UI elements, the more compact we can make the non-diegetic elements we use which will dramatically improve the spectating experience overall.
About this blog -
So this was the first blog for the GameHeart project. If you have any comments or critiques on how it is organized, or ideas for things you would like me to talk about or cover in future blogs please let me know. Is there too much information? Too little? How in depth do you want me to go into about the work on each part of GameHeart? Also if anyone knows how to fix youtube embeds so they fill the width of the blog let me know.
Frequency wise I am considering either 1 or 2 week intervals between posts.
Anyways, thank you for your time and please share with me your ideas. Lets get a real discussion going about how we can improve starcraft 2 spectating!
I hope more tournaments will use your tool. When I saw team logos on the map I did not knew that it was gamehearth feature, I think its cool. I think this thing will stick with sc2 for a very long time.
First of all: Sick write up, thats what you do after a kickstarter!
I will say this again and it's the same thing I said when I first heard about gameheart: Every sc2 tournament should use this, at least every one besides wcs (as they seem to be keen on doing their own ui)! I love this UI, kinda sad we didn't get to 18k to have custom player intros, but still I can't wait for newer versions, gonna check out ghlight now!
Now for a small feature request: Could you please add a small icon on top of a building/morphing/warping struture, in a simmilar way as units being produced have now? That would greatly help spot if what is warping is a pylon or a Dark Shrine with just a quick glance, which I think would be very useful and for a relatively small visual cost.
And to answer your request, 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. I think what you have now, which is showing a blink icon when a stalker is selected, making it colored when blink is available (ie a mechanic that is exactly the one already present in the game) makes a lot of sense. Granted, that does not allow you to completely remove the selected unit pannel, but honestly I don't think that would be such a good idea. It is a good idea maybe to try and minimize it, only showing the most relevant info, but I don't think you should remove it completely. Being able to show how many hitpoints that hatchery had left is also a really cool feature that, albeit conditional, I feel should not be removed either. The other elements of the UI I think can be deleted without too much problem.
On October 07 2013 22:06 Ender985 wrote: Hey! Great job with the ui, I'm a big fan!
Now for a small feature request: Could you please add a small icon on top of a building/morphing/warping struture, in a simmilar way as units being produced have now? That would greatly help spot if what is warping is a pylon or a Dark Shrine with just a quick glance, which I think would be very useful and for a relatively small visual cost.
Good job, and keep it up!
Im not a fan of adding icons to the game, as it makes the UI look too busy. An alternative could be to superimpose a transparent model of the finished building that is only visible to the observers.
Hey, everything looks great, thanks for the update. I would say in the mock up it's pretty important to have the game clock. I know this is just a preview, but just something to consider in the future.
I would like to see more Diegetic styles (In-game, In-narrative). These add so much to your character development and just the overall emotional investment to the game. I wish you lots of luck.
On October 07 2013 22:06 Ender985 wrote: Hey! Great job with the ui, I'm a big fan!
Now for a small feature request: Could you please add a small icon on top of a building/morphing/warping struture, in a simmilar way as units being produced have now? That would greatly help spot if what is warping is a pylon or a Dark Shrine with just a quick glance, which I think would be very useful and for a relatively small visual cost.
Good job, and keep it up!
Im not a fan of adding icons to the game, as it makes the UI look too busy. An alternative could be to superimpose a transparent model of the finished building that is only visible to the observers.
Have definitely considered both solutions before. I can't remember what got in the way of implementing it but I will look into it again. I know Ahli created a map that used the 'ghost structures' that you see when you are trying to figure out where to place a building to do something similar before so maybe I can mooch some of that off of him.
The UI is great. I assume that the production is switching with units/structures/resources lost etc. About unit window selection i have slightly different opinion. I agree that its pointless to select a single stalker, or to select buildings because of the icons that GH provides. On the other hand i think that it is very useful when observer select all zerglings/stalkers/marines on the screen and i can quickly count them when i see like 2.5 row in unit window selection. I can see the difference between a group of 4 and of 8 stalkers. But the difference between 12 and 20 zerglings is not that big, as they run around. I know that you can see how many units are in units tab, but not always all of zerglings are in the same place. Maybe its just my thing, because you can see how many units are there, but i like to know EXACTLY how many units are there.
I don't know how well it would work but an idea would be that you see the units moving direction on the minimap, sort of like in league of legends, you see an arrow where the units are moving to.
Maybe only show the arrow if there are at least 5 units in a ball moving towards that location. You could make the arrow bigger the more units are involved.
So basically waypoints which are viewable on the minimap, but smarter that it doesnt get too clustered.
Could be that the minimap is just too small and it doesn't work though.
I have an idea for uni upgrades, what if you change the heal image of the unit if it had some upgrade, for example if a baneling have speed the image change to a baneling ball or a stalker, the image change to a biger stalker or something that can be graphicaly reference to a blink stalker
I don't think you need to add permanent effects to all units when they get their specific upgrades, I feel like that could end up making them look wonky. Perhaps you should instead make a very obvious notifier for when an upgrade is unlocked. Like if a player just finished researching blink the blink sound would be heard and the blink icon would flash by the player's bar at the bottom. I mean, usually you don't forget whether someone has upgraded or not. When you click a unit to see if they have the upgrade it's because you don't know if you caught it finishing or not. By making an upgrade very apparent when researched I think that need would be eliminated.
As for cooldowns you could perhaps use the countdown circle thing that Widow Mines had in the HotS beta.
Lastly. As a huge fan of kill counts (I love my hero immortals), it would be fun if you could add a toggle to show units killed as a number floating above each unit's head. To notify casters of a high kill count unit, you could make a skull flash over it briefly for every 5 or 10 kills it gets.
Oh and one more thing. I know this goes completely against the idea of diegetic UI elements but perhaps you should consider the ability for observers to pull up unit cards on the screen, filled with even more information than the unit selection screen. It would be bad to have in the middle of the action but perhaps it could be good when discussing each player's unit capabilities during downtime, educating new viewers or analysing a replay. I made a quick mockup to somewhat show what I mean. http://i.imgur.com/HhbEJ9z.png (Some notes. The stats would change along with upgrades as indicated with the green colour and the background colour of the card would correspond with the player colour.)
My suggestions might in fact be stupid and worthless but nevertheless I'm greatly looking forward to the end result of the project. I hope more tournaments pick up Gameheart in the future. Best of luck!
The more information you take away from the UI / game, the less casters have to talk about. In my opinion, as quite a "hardcore" player and viewer, i definitely disagree with the stripping away of any information from the UI.
On October 07 2013 21:13 GameHeart wrote: I am also running tests on the Stronger Team Colors mod system which will allow STC to only display for observers and leave players unaffected. Hopefully this will encourage tournaments to seriously consider using STC as I feel it dramatically improves the readability of the game on web streams, particularly the ZvZ matchup.
I love the concept of STC but in practice the times I saw it used it was comedicly overdone. Dial it back 4 or 5 notches and it would be much more likely to become common.
On October 08 2013 01:04 RiSkysc2 wrote: The more information you take away from the UI / game, the less casters have to talk about. In my opinion, as quite a "hardcore" player and viewer, i definitely disagree with the stripping away of any information from the UI.
In an ideal situation they will be able to bring it up in some form when needed.
Also the casters will talk about what they want to talk about without concern with what is and isn't on the screen. I often notice observers pointing out things that the casters ignore.
Even things like minerals, gas, and supply could be removed for at least 80% of the game and nothing important would be lost as long as they pop up at the right moments, before and after fights for example.
I think I like the idea of big upgrades and key buildings being announced, perhaps similarly to Dota 2 where when a player purchases a big item, a box pops out of the right side of the screen showing what they bought. + Show Spoiler +
It's obviously too much if this is done for every upgrade and building, but maybe storm, stim, charge, blink, dt shrine, ht shrine, robo bay, fusion core :D, infestor den, (first) spire, ultra den, greater spire, etc. With expansions you might only show them before a certain time or if they are actually expos (not macro hatches or orbitals in the middle of nowhere...dunno this could be hard).
I think this would be a cool feature that helps the viewer interact with the game more effectively, and I don't think the casters would be hurt by this (rather helped).
I just thought about something.. we keep seeing BIG mine hits BIG tank shots BIG bane hits BIG storms... wouldn't it be awesome if the game would show how many units died / how much dmg is done or how much ressources that single unit killed?
On October 08 2013 02:15 Enema wrote: I just thought about something.. we keep seeing BIG mine hits BIG tank shots BIG bane hits BIG storms... wouldn't it be awesome if the game would show how many units died / how much dmg is done or how much ressources that single unit killed?
Someone emailed me about a month ago suggesting that I add a feature where an observer can press a button and a small window would open that would keep track of all of the units/resources killed while the window is open. I really like this idea but unfortunately it is only possible with GameHeart Classic.
Screen space is always a big problem for overlays. My suggestion: put semi-relevant information into a ticker. I dont need to know the mapname, scorecount, eventname, stage of the tournament, wins needed etc all the time. all these things could appear in one single box.
On October 08 2013 01:28 eskashaborn wrote: I think I like the idea of big upgrades and key buildings being announced, perhaps similarly to Dota 2 where when a player purchases a big item, a box pops out of the right side of the screen showing what they bought. + Show Spoiler +
It's obviously too much if this is done for every upgrade and building, but maybe storm, stim, charge, blink, dt shrine, ht shrine, robo bay, fusion core :D, infestor den, (first) spire, ultra den, greater spire, etc. With expansions you might only show them before a certain time or if they are actually expos (not macro hatches or orbitals in the middle of nowhere...dunno this could be hard).
I think this would be a cool feature that helps the viewer interact with the game more effectively, and I don't think the casters would be hurt by this (rather helped).
So what is the project you're working on? Maybe you could show a quick description of what the project is at the very top? Like one to two sentences?
Edit: I just don't get what GameHeart is, and it seems like you've had previous version released. But this is my first time hearing about the whole thing.
On October 08 2013 08:12 CecilSunkure wrote: So what is the project you're working on? Maybe you could show a quick description of what the project is at the very top? Like one to two sentences?
Edit: I just don't get what GameHeart is, and it seems like you've had previous version released. But this is my first time hearing about the whole thing.
some stuff might be different as this was a little while ago but here is a video showcasing it.
It's a custom UI used by dreamhack and many other tournaments.
On October 08 2013 08:12 CecilSunkure wrote: So what is the project you're working on? Maybe you could show a quick description of what the project is at the very top? Like one to two sentences?
Edit: I just don't get what GameHeart is, and it seems like you've had previous version released. But this is my first time hearing about the whole thing.
Way to be out of the loop! Gameheart is some kinda whatchamacallit spectating UI that lets the organizers do various fun stuff like customize logos and layout.
On October 08 2013 19:51 sztanpet wrote: where is the version control repo? surely its opensource right?
GameHeartClassic and GameHeartLight are saved as .SC2Mod and .SC2Interface files respectively. The files are compressed archives in Bilzzard's own MPQ format. You can think of them as similar to zip, rar, or tar files. It doesn't really make sense to use a traditional version control system (git, svn, mercurial) to track changes to the files.
I hope that GameHeart.org will eventually have a downloads section listing all the published versions for download. Until then, the .SC2Mod files are available for download via battle.net and .SC2Interface files are being published in their existing TL thread. If you want to see what's in them you can pop them open with one of the many free and open source MPQ Readers/Editors.
And thank you ShadesofGraylin for explaining the situation. I use dropbox to manage all of my files for GameHeart. It doesn't make a lot of sense to use a public repository but yes GHClassic is already available to anyone to see if they download it from battle.net (sorry it's uncommented and confusing as hell but I will be reworking it quite a bit during this project). GHLight does not exist yet. I am building many smaller test files right now which you can find on the arcade by searching GHTesting though they will probably not be of much interest to anyone at the moment. I am currently just trying to figure out the exact structure for my mod files to be as efficient and easy to understand as possible.
Currently I am working on the Logos system as I said in the blog post. The new and old versions of GameHeart use different methods for selecting logos so I am trying to find the best way to combine them to make the entire system easier to manage and update.
On October 08 2013 01:28 eskashaborn wrote: I think I like the idea of big upgrades and key buildings being announced, perhaps similarly to Dota 2 where when a player purchases a big item, a box pops out of the right side of the screen showing what they bought. + Show Spoiler +
It's obviously too much if this is done for every upgrade and building, but maybe storm, stim, charge, blink, dt shrine, ht shrine, robo bay, fusion core :D, infestor den, (first) spire, ultra den, greater spire, etc. With expansions you might only show them before a certain time or if they are actually expos (not macro hatches or orbitals in the middle of nowhere...dunno this could be hard).
I think this would be a cool feature that helps the viewer interact with the game more effectively, and I don't think the casters would be hurt by this (rather helped).
That would be a most welcome idea
That would be great for casters and the audience
I think the system you guys are describing is already being implemented actually. It was one of the stretch goals in the IndieGoGo campaign and the goal was met. You can see a mockup of what the notification might look like here.
I love GameHeart and how much it has brought to the game. I think it's a great UI that focuses on the important stuff while leaving the trivial stuff out.
In regards to the sailing video, I think that StarCraft has a relatively simple goal, make the opponent leave, but the way to get to that goal is SO diverse that it cannot be easily communicated with a non-fan within a few minutes without an EXTREMELY obtrusive UI that takes away from the game, which, obviously, needs to be avoided. I really like the concept, but I'm not sure how StarCraft, or GameHeart for that matter, goes about doing that.
I brainstormed some thoughts about the sc2 interface, some of which can probably only be implemented by Blizzard.
Questions:
One problem with minimal user interfaces is that beginners might find it hard to understand what is happening (e.g. the name of the unit, how strong it is, etc). Do you think tournaments should provide streams with different interfaces to cater to all types of viewers?
Is there sufficient space on your user interface to handle exceptional conditions (e.g. Imagine a late game ZvP where the zerg has neuraled a probe and is building one of each unit and upgrade for both races)?
It might be possible to attract more sponsorship into sc2 tournaments if animated textures (e.g. adverts) were embedded into the map or projected onto billboard doodads, is this feasible in Gameheart? Or possibly add textures that slowly fade out (e.g. the map name).
I realise that Blizzard have performance reasons for not doing this (which may be alleviated in the future with hardware advancements) but do you think unit and building models should more visibly display damage to spectators so that health bars aren't needed?
When watching replays, I pay particular attention to when the Idle Workers tab is highlighted; should this information appear in the UI in some form or is just extraneous? I know GomTV has a pop up which displays the amount of time workers are idle but their interface is really crowded.
Ideas:
I wonder if the Unit Supply data could be better presented graphically as a percentage bar or circle (possibly with animation effects when the supply block, exceeded or max conditions are met). It could provide a more intuitive way of showing spectators the difference in supply between players (maybe even store two colour states to visually show how much supply has increased or decreased over the past minute), though I suspect most spectators will find this annoying.
Some games are decided without players ever mining gas (e.g. canon rush, 6 pool vs cc first, etc), so the interface could be made marginally more minimal by only adding the 'Gas' icon and data to the UI once the player begins mining.
Some custom UI's display the player's APM (e.g. 234), and although the data isn't particularly useful it can be a good way of showing how much pressure the player is under. A different way of representing this could be to show a waveform over time to highlight extreme micro over the player's general performance. The y axis could also be a relative value set by either player's highest peak APM (e.g. for two bronze players the graph height might start at 40).
XP is often disabled using the game settings and is fairly unintuitive (e.g. what does 125 XP mean?), but it can be a useful way of showing in game how many resources were lost in an engagement. One way of making it more visually appealing might be to replace the floating XP values with mineral or vespene gas icons (where each icon represents a specific amount of resources), this has been used fairly successfully in other video games.
Having the saturation count floating above a base slightly ruins the visual appeal of the game, so I wonder if there is a better way of displaying the information. Maybe the text colour could change when say 16/24 workers is reached, or replace the text with "Optimal" (other effects for maximumly saturated or over saturated could also be added). Another alternative would be to remove the saturation overlay and visually represent on the map, the route to each mineral and gas with slots that are filled up as a worker is added.
One cool idea for the full size mini-map window could be to show real time heat map information (e.g. Where have units died on the map, worker deaths, spells used, etc). I would imagine this would be extremely difficult to implement and take up a lot of game resources.
The mini-map has some scope for displaying information in a cleaner fashion:
Inactive creep tumours could be removed from the map (as seen in the HotS campaign) or darkened to be less noticeable. They don't really add extra information to the game and make it harder to see active tumours and army units, they can also be inferred by the presence of creep and that the player has visibility).
I'd quite like to see a production building rally point icon added to the mini-map, though this may increase clutter.
Overlapping sensor towers could be cleaned up by removing redundant information (e.g. Like this mockup). Too many towers being built (especially in TvT or team games) can make the minimap extremely cluttered and they are currently deleted if more than 16 are built. Also the sensor rings could be set to player's colour instead of white.
Once a player has achieved victory, it would be cool if the camera (possibly in monochrome) panned across the map and every unit/building that was destroyed in game was represented where it died with their death model. This is probably extremely hard to implement and there may be performance implications for especially long games.
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:
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![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49867307/GAMEHEART/Blog/Images/header.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49867307/GAMEHEART/Blog/Images/FeatureComparison.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49867307/GAMEHEART/Blog/Images/Interface1_01_lrg.jpg)
Can't wait to see the update in a few weeks!
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/64uH2PU.png)
