GameHeart Project, Update 6

GameHeart

286 Posts

December 20 2013 15:07 GMT

Previous updates:
GameHeart Project, Update #1
GameHeart Project, Update #2
GameHeart Project, Update #3
GameHeart Project, Update #4
GameHeart Project, Update #5

Update -

Hey everyone, sorry for a late update but I have been pretty busy. It won’t be a long update this week but there are a couple of things to talk about and a few things I want you to go test.

Before I go into that though I want to share something that was really exciting for me. Here is TotalBiscuit talking about GameHeart in his recent Shoutcraft post-mortem.

If you're not using Gameheart, you're shooting yourself in the foot

A big round of applause for Gameheart and its developers. Those maps continue to go from strength to strength in terms of their functionality. The ingame scoreboard was a huge timesaver for us and allowed me to reduce the complexity of the production process resulting in less (afaik actually no) production errors. We'll continue to use Gameheart exclusively for any events we run in future and urge other tournaments to do the same. The functionality of these maps is peerless and strong colours imho should become standard for tournament play since it gives a superior viewing experience to spectators. This is particularly true in mirror matchups, specifically ZvZ where the coloured banelings make it much easier for spectators and casters to see exactly what's going on at any given moment in the early game. I've seen some of the upcoming functionality for this map and it's extremely exciting. The sponsor was particularly pleased to see their branding on the map and as a teamowner I've always been happy to see our teams logo there too. Brand awareness is a real thing even if you aren't making money out of it directly, people should see the Axiom logo and know exactly what it is at first glance. Gameheart maps have done a lot to make that happen and they continue to make online matches more viable as promotional tools for teams and sponsors. I honestly have nothing bad to say about Gameheart in its current form and it's only going to get stronger as the new patch brings extensions into play which will allow Gameheart to be used on every map without the team having to individually alter each of them.

To be honest I was rather nervous for both Shoutcrafts when TB decided to use GameHeart. I know he is someone who is willing to share his displeasure when he feels something is not as good as it should be, and that scared me because he has so many people who really listen to him. It was a huge relief to me to find that he was very pleased with GameHeart. Thanks man!

Stronger team colors rework -

On Monday I was made aware that a player was requesting that the stronger team colors mod not be used during their matches because they had seen some of the STC textures during a match they had played the day before in a different event. That is a totally reasonable request but it obviously created some concern for me.

Now I am not certain if this problem occurred as a genuine bug or if it occurred because the stronger team colors setting was accidentally set to ‘everyone’ instead of ‘observers’ for that game. Even viewing a replay would not help me because there is no way to know what they set it to in a replay. It was also the only report I have had of that problem. Which reminds me, if you are a player or caster and you find something that you do not think is working the way it should be in GameHeart please do not hesitate to contact me about it. I cannot fix something if I do not know about it.

Well anyways I decided to go and study the STC system for any possible issues and eventually while I was unable to find any problems myself, I did discover a much better way of handling how STC textures were displayed for observers (and not displayed for players). So the system has now been redesigned using the newer method. I believe if the issues I was hearing about were genuine this solution should fix them as well. I have also removed the ‘everyone’ option from stronger team colors to prevent any future confusion.

I went ahead and created a map so that you can go and easily test the STC system in GameHeart yourself. It is called “GHTesting - STC” and it is available on the NA region. Create a game with you as the only player and you will have resources and workers available to build any building or unit at an accelerated rate to be certain that none of them appear to have stronger team colors for you. After you have built enough units to satisfy that you were unable to see the STC textures as a player, go ahead and watch the replay to be certain those textures were appearing during the replay (when you watch a replay you are treated the same as an observer). I believe there shouldn’t be any issues but if anyone can find one I am sure iHeroic will. Get to work buddy!

Notifications -

Good news! The notifications system I mentioned in Update 4 is nearly complete. The MIT Game Lab guys have been working hard to port it over from their Overseer project so that it can function in GameHeart. I will be adding it to all GHLight maps sometime today, but you can test it for yourself right now by searching for “GHMITTest” in the custom games section and launching a game on it as an observer.

For those of you unfamiliar with the notifications system, it is basically a little window that pops up on the right side of your screen to countdown the last 15 seconds or so of an upgrade. It looks like this:

Please go test it out if you get the chance! I have been playing with it myself for a few days now and everything has worked perfectly for me but maybe you guys will find some problem I could not! My hope is that it will be used for the Naniwa versus Scarlett showmatch this weekend, and it will be unless you guys find a reason for it not to be.

Team colored effects -

More good news! The team colored effects system I said I would implement to make it up to you guys for not doing the notifications system (which I am not doing because the MIT guys were already working on it!) is almost ready for implementation. Please keep in mind like all features in GameHeart, only observers will be able to see these colored effects. To players it will look like a normal game.

While I have got most of the effects I wanted to working with team colors some do not look very good. And we need to decide which of them should be team colored and which shouldn’t of this group. The following effects have had team colors implemented:

Force Field
Guardian Shield
Time Warp
Psi Storm
EMP
Scanner Sweep
Fungal Growth
Blinding Cloud

I have created a map where you can easily test these effects for yourself. You can find it in the custom games section of the NA region. It is called “GHTesting - TCE”. Please go check it out, tell me which effects you think should not be team colored (I am leaning towards removing it from Fungal Growth) and which colors on each effect you think are too strong or not strong enough so I can adjust this to be perfect before it goes in.

Okay so that’s it for now for the things I would like you guys to go test. Onto some other topics.

Thank yous -

Something I wanted to do this week was thank all of the people who have helped me with this project over the last year and a half. By no means is the project over. This isn’t something I am doing to wrap it up. I just wanted to get this out there so you guys could know more about the people who have been contributing to this project, some of which you may not have been aware of. There have been a lot of people and hopefully I won’t miss anyone.

I am not going to include the IndieGoGo contributors on this list. I am going to do another thank you specifically for them in the next blog update. Believe me I am VERY grateful for the people who have financed this project and enabled me to continue to work on it. This list however will be for people who have directly had their fingers in the project one way or another.

Ahli

Ahli joined this project early this year, but even before that he was answering my questions on the sc2mapster forums. He starting working on his own observer mod for Starcraft, but eventually decided to join me in working on GameHeart so we could produce a single mod that was as good as it could be.

Because he is extremely knowledgeable about UI files I mostly leverage his help when dealing with interface files. But make no mistake, he is a really solid developer of SC2 mods. He is the developer of the Diablo mod for SC2 and was also involved in the Temple Siege II project. Whenever I get stuck on something I go to him first, and often times he points out something stupid that I did almost immediately.

Kevin ‘Cloaken’ Johnson and Blizzard

I am actually going to do a section specifically about Blizzard and their relationship with the GameHeart project after this thank you section. To be honest from my perspective the relationship between Blizzard and GameHeart has felt up and down at times but overall it has been very positive, especially in the last few months.

John ‘The Translator’ Park and the Gom guys

John was a huge part of getting GameHeart into GSTL earlier this year. The amount of testing he did to help me prepare the old version of GameHeart for tournaments was extraordinary. Unfortunately they no longer use GameHeart for their broadcasts, but I hope that with the new version out now they will look at it again someday.

Dreamhack Guys

Dreamhack adopting GameHeart was a huge win for the project. And they have steadfastly stuck with GameHeart for all of their events this year. While I have no retired the older version of GameHeart they were using, I hope they will consider using this new version for their events next year.

They were also a huge part of developing the look of the main GameHeart UI. I worked with their graphic design and producers to find a design that could accommodate them, and it has turned out to be immensely successful with dozens of tournaments and broadcasters now using the same interface.

Adebisi

Adebisi is a pretty cool guy. He has been providing me with input from the perspective of a dedicated observer for over a year. I have made a lot of changes to GameHeart over the last year based on his input.

Heaven and Legend

While I only interacted with them through John both Heaven and Legend did a lot of testing with GameHeart before it was used in GSTL, and I made quite a few changes based on their feedback.

Matt “MegaBuster” Mega

While not a direct contributor to the project anymore, he was part of the original GameHeart team and someone I almost always share my troubles with regarding the project so I can benefit from his sage wisdom. He also created both of the promotional videos for GameHeart. Thanks man!

MIT Game Lab

Awesome dudes. Besides giving me a bunch of money they have developed a huge number of cool spectator tools of their own. The best part? They have agreed to implement most of those features into GameHeart rather than just creating a competing spectator mod so that tournaments can get the best of both worlds!

Thanks Nick and Philip!

Chris ‘ChanmanV’ Chan

Chanman has been really good to the GameHeart project. He has had me on climbing the ladder twice, first to discuss the project and it’s incorporation into Dreamhack earlier this year, and then again to discuss my IndieGoGo campaign more recently. I really appreciate his support.

pzea

Pzea is the developer of the stronger team colors mod and he has been helping create new STC textures for HotS units that I will get into GameHeart eventually. Great dude!

eSports Canada

These guys were the first tournament to take a chance on using the earliest version of GameHeart. Thank you so much! You really helped me at a time when I was struggling to get people to realize the potential of the project.

Zolden

Zolden is an awesome guy. He can usually be found lurking around the sc2mapster IRC channel. I always go to him when I need some custom model produced for GameHeart. The model that I use to display logos on the ground was created by him for example.

Renee2islga

Renee is the developer of the GAx3 mod for SC2. This mod provides a lot of tools that are not necessarily built into the editor to make it easier for other developers like me to build their mods. I have used Renee’s tools pretty extensively during the project. I would also like to note that Renee is probably the most knowledgeable person when it comes to the SC2 editor outside of Blizzard. I don’t think I have ever had a question that Renee was unable to answer.

Sasha ‘Scarlett’ Hostyn

Some of you may not be aware but Scarlett was actually a bit of a mod developer back in WC3. After she played in GSTL on GameHeart for the first time I asked to get her feedback on playing with it in a high pressure setting and she was very helpful. Even going so far as to look at my code to help me find problems!

Penny Arcade Forum Community

The PA forums have been really helpful when it comes to testing GameHeart. And I really appreciate all of their help. Especially guys like Kambing who are usually willing to hop in a game with me to test something that he probably won’t even be able to see!

Honestly I am sure there are a lot more people I should be thanking but there are so many that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Thank you everyone who has been involved!

Blizzard and GameHeart -

I wanted to take a moment to thank Blizzard in particular for their help over the last few months. Behind the scenes of this project I have been sending them bugs and suggestions for them to fix/implement in the 2.1 patch and they have been really going out of their way to accommodate me. Here is an example of some of the things that they have already fixed or said that they will fix that I have sent them:

Regional Attribute References

Player Attributes in Mod Files

Broken Attribute References

Corrupt Game Attributes

Default Observer ID

I do the best job I can to present my issues so that they can address them as easily as possible, but I do not always understand why something is going wrong so it can be difficult. Beyond this they have also been pretty supportive in the past. They have fixed bugs I have reported and even at one point looked through my code to find a mistake I made that I had reported as a bug with the editor. After something like that it would be easy for them to disregard problems I send them in the future, but they have continued to support me.

While it’s true that they do not use GameHeart for WCS I think their reasoning is pretty fair. The old GameHeart was pretty bulky and they felt in order to okay it for WCS they really needed to QA it themselves, which would have been a pretty significant task. Beyond that they are also concerned that a mod like GameHeart could open the door to mod developers and perhaps tournaments trying to rebalance the game themselves. It is possible with something like GameHeart to adjust the movement speed or damage output of a unit, which is dangerous for competitive play. I have no interest in doing that and I promise that nothing like that is done in GameHeart. It is open source so anyone can download the GameHeart mod files to see for themselves. I do manipulate data but only to achieve things like swapping textures for stronger team colors, or putting logos on the ground. With the new GameHeart being so much simpler than the previous version I am hoping they will reconsider it for WCS someday.

Sometimes GameHeart feels under pressure when they add features that are in GameHeart to the default spectator tools. But there is nothing wrong with them trying to improve their game, and honestly that pressure pushes me to continue to improve GameHeart and come up with new ideas to keep it ahead of the curve. I hope that GameHeart has also served as a tool for them to figure out what spectator features are worthwhile and are justified in being added to the game itself.

Old discussion topic (team sponsors) -

I brought this up back in Update 2 but after feeling like I did not get much of a response I decided to move away from it. But Liquid Nazgul came around and said that he liked the idea and wanted to see it implemented, and offered any help he could to get it there.

He has put me in contact with people from some of the biggest teams so I can put together a limited test version of this concept. I have sent them a document detailing what I need from them to make it happen, and as soon as they starting sending stuff in I will begin working on it.

Here is the new mockup for how I would like to implement team sponsor logos into GameHeart:

[image loading]

Now before you get too worked up about it being distracting or what have you, be aware that this will only show up for the first 1-2 minutes of the game and then it will fade away. The idea is for it to be there during the “starting in the bottom left” player intros that are common in tournaments, while there is virtually nothing else going on to be distracted from.

Because some tournaments I have shown this to have expressed concern that their sponsors may not be okay with the conflict of showing team sponsors it will be a toggleable option. However I hope that all tournaments will eventually come around and see that we need to generate investment in teams so that they can grow and get stronger, provide better games with bigger personalities to strengthen the esports scene of Starcraft II. And all tournaments will benefit from a stronger SC2 esports scene.

I am also considering some other possibilities for showing team sponsors throughout the game, but right now this is the main concept. Please share your thoughts in the comments below or on the reddit thread for this blog update!

Thanks guys!
-Ryan

tomastaz

United States976 Posts

December 20 2013 15:20 GMT

Whoa I really like the sponsors showing up for 1-2 minutes thing. Looks really cool!

Xaeldaren

Ireland588 Posts

December 20 2013 15:23 GMT

You are a god among men. Amazing work <3

Locke-

499 Posts

December 20 2013 15:26 GMT

Keep up the good work! This is truly an amazing addition to SC2 for spectators!

Starbucks

United Kingdom14 Posts

December 20 2013 15:43 GMT

The notifications feature is amazing! Great work, thank you so much for GameHeart!

vjcamarena

Spain493 Posts

December 20 2013 15:46 GMT

Love the idea of showing the sponsors during the first minute or two. I can even see it being played for laughs in the downtime "Oh, come on, Huk, what do you have against Razer? Don't cover up your sponsor's name with pylons!"

Rustug

1488 Posts

December 20 2013 16:02 GMT

Great work, as always. Keep going strong!
And thank you Blizzard for showing support for GameHeart!

Bluejava

Sweden135 Posts

December 20 2013 16:18 GMT

WOW thats looks fucking amazing!!!!!!

The_Templar

your Country52797 Posts

December 20 2013 16:52 GMT

Awesome!!
If you guys support GameHeart, please vote for him in the TLCMAT!

Poll: R1CH vs GameHeart?

GameHeart (184)

51%

R1CH (179)

49%

363 total votes

Your vote: R1CH vs GameHeart?

(Vote): R1CH
(Vote): GameHeart

y0su

Finland7871 Posts

December 20 2013 16:58 GMT

#10

Awesome update! - I think the direction of team sponsors is pretty cool!

Amazing work overall and I look forward to using this in the future :D

TrutY

Croatia26 Posts

December 20 2013 17:08 GMT

#11

I was wondering today where is the update and here it is

RayBeans

Germany331 Posts

December 20 2013 17:27 GMT

#12

Gameheart is getting better and better. We started using it in the OPSL now.
Thanks a lot

howLiN

Portugal1676 Posts

December 20 2013 17:34 GMT

#13

Great job, but did you actually discard completely this idea for the interface? If you forget all the borders' cluttering, it was the cleanest interface I've ever seen, and it would be a great idea to make one like this.

GameHeart

286 Posts

December 20 2013 17:43 GMT

#14

On December 21 2013 02:34 howLiN wrote:
Great job, but did you actually discard completely this idea for the interface? If you forget all the borders' cluttering, it was the cleanest interface I've ever seen, and it would be a great idea to make one like this.

We released that interface a couple of updates back. But we are still adjusting it after we received quite a bit of feedback on it.

On December 21 2013 02:27 RayBeans wrote:
Gameheart is getting better and better. We started using it in the OPSL now.
Thanks a lot

I did add your logo to GameHeart but I think it is only in the EU region right now. I will issue an update to all regions later today.

howLiN

Portugal1676 Posts

December 20 2013 18:05 GMT

#15

On December 21 2013 02:43 GameHeart wrote:

Show nested quote +

We released that interface a couple of updates back. But we are still adjusting it after we received quite a bit of feedback on it.

Oh sorry, I missed that. It looks really cool, really excited to see what the final version will look like!

Grumbels

Netherlands7031 Posts

December 20 2013 18:25 GMT

#16

No team colors for psionic storm please, it already is equal opportunity in killing everything. To be honest, I didn't think the proposed forcefields looked very good. How about if you make the color only 50% as strong?

IcookTacos

Sweden295 Posts

December 20 2013 19:03 GMT

#17

Great work man! I love to follow the progression of the development and can't wait to see all of these neat features in tourneys!

Darkdwarf

Sweden960 Posts

December 20 2013 19:15 GMT

#18

You're awesome.

tili

United States1332 Posts

December 20 2013 19:54 GMT

#19

Development has gone from nifty to fucking incredible.

Ry2D2

United States429 Posts

December 20 2013 20:34 GMT

#20

Keep up the good work Ryan. All I can say is how amazing this all looks :D

RakeSC2

Norway37 Posts

December 20 2013 21:22 GMT

#21

This things just keeps getting better and better. Awesome work, and thanks for the constant updates.

operwolf

United States324 Posts

December 20 2013 22:20 GMT

#22

This really does look amazing.

NovemberstOrm

Canada16217 Posts

December 21 2013 01:02 GMT

#23

The consistent updates you provide are great, thank you!

feardragon

United States970 Posts

December 21 2013 03:42 GMT

#24

Sick work Ryan! Can't wait for some of these big updates!

GameHeart

286 Posts

December 21 2013 05:20 GMT

#25

Thanks guys!

FYI I have made the upgrade notifications feature that MIT Game Lab created available on all GHLight maps across all regions now.

ETisME

12356 Posts

December 21 2013 14:18 GMT

#26

omg keep up with the good work, be more confident of your work :D

Grumbels

Netherlands7031 Posts

December 21 2013 17:31 GMT

#27

The upgrade window at the right, would it be possible to have it fade out over five seconds instead of just disappearing at once?

Also, instead of showing 1/100th of a second can you just show 1/10th of a second? It's too busy.

howLiN

Portugal1676 Posts

December 21 2013 17:43 GMT

#28

I'm watching the Bitcoin showmatch right now and the notifications are really cool. My suggestion about them is, would it be possible to have them popout a little more when the upgrade is complete? Something like a small change on its size, as in the notification window gets a little bigger when the update is completed, before it fades out.

SidianTheBard

United States2474 Posts

December 21 2013 20:14 GMT

#29

Really glad so many tournaments are now picking up Gameheart. Well done bud!

nrv

United States113 Posts

December 21 2013 22:56 GMT

#30

The team colors thing is really cool, I used to love that mod when you could use it.

Plansix

United States60190 Posts

December 22 2013 01:23 GMT

#31

This man is doing gods work. This is so good. I am excited for every event to start using it.

ahswtini

Northern Ireland22208 Posts

December 22 2013 01:48 GMT

#32

Holy jimmies how do you do this sort of stuff?

iHirO

United Kingdom1381 Posts

December 22 2013 04:46 GMT

#33

Here's some feedback after testing.

GHTesting - STC
+ Show Spoiler +

The Hive fails to load STC at the beginning of the game. Although it will be impossible for a Hive to exist at the beginning of the game and constructed hives correctly use STC, it might be worth checking if there is an underlying error.
The Zoom hotkey is disabled and the map centre contains unbuildable terrain, where it has been edited. Also the 'Arm Silo With Nuke' upgrade and gateways with Warpgate researched could be updated to build instantly. This is only worth changing if this map will be kept for future testing.
Consider updating the Engineering Bay textures to appear brighter (as shown below). Im uncertain if STC is being applied but this structure is noticeably duller than all the other Terran structures.
Consider updating the hallucinations to incorporate the player colour (as shown below). Currently they are always dark blue for both sides.

GHMITTest - STC
+ Show Spoiler +

This is looking much more polished now, really impressive work! Fifteen seconds seems like a decent interval and it prevents more than five upgrades appearing on screen at once.
The upgrade notification handles Chronoboost incorrectly (e.g. if there are 6.5 seconds remaining on an upgrade and Chronoboost is applied, the upgrade will complete in under 5 seconds with the timer counting down faster). Ideally the notification should subtract 1.5s as soon as the boost is applied and then count down normally. It may be impossible to apply to apply this logic to the interface and the difference is only a few seconds so this issue could be ignored.
The upgrade notification doesn't handle paused progress conditions (i.e. pylon power loss and contamination) and simply stops the timer. The text could be updated to show a 'paused' state to notify the audience (as shown below), however the dialog occupies valuable space so another option might be to hide it until progress is resumed.
All upgrade notifications are displayed on screen with 16 seconds remaining instead of 15. Not sure if this intentional or a timing error.
The "Gravitic Booster" upgrade should be changed to "Gravitic Boosters".
The Transformation Servos icon is currently incorrect. I've sent a bug report to Blizzard so this may be fixed soon.
The "Chitinous Plating" upgrade contains an error.
Specific upgrades have an empty 'Completed' progress bar.
Consider renaming the "Protoss Shields Level X" upgrades to "Shields Level X" to be consistent with all the other upgrades that have had their race removed.
The "Vehicle and Ship Weapons Level X" upgrade names have been shortened to "Vehicle/Ship Weapons X" to fit, however all the other the upgrades contain "Level". Consider renaming it to "Vehicle Weapons Level X" as the audience will understand that ships are also vehicles.
Currently if a Terran building is destroyed with an Add-on that was researching an upgrade, a "Cancelled" notification is displayed. Should this be changed to "Denied" or is this condition impossible to check for?
How does GameHeart decide which upgrades to display notifications for, is it a case of first come, first served? Or does it prioritise displaying upgrades from both players where possible?
If a 2v2 version of this interface was developed, how would GameHeart handle the extra upgrade notifications displayed on screen. Would the time be reduced to 10 seconds, or could it prioritise important upgrades first?

GHTesting - TCE
+ Show Spoiler +

I really like the coloured Time Warps and Orbital Scans, Blizzard should definitely implement this in game.
When viewing the replay, all coloured spell effects are replaced with a white colour.
The Nuke icon is only partially set to the player colour and the surrounding red graphic fails to appear around 50% of the time.
Consider making forcefields more visible as the red and blue colours are difficult to see on low graphics settings.
Consider making the Psionic Storm effect dual colour (as shown below) as the current implementation is less unappealing. The original effect has a combination of a blue background with white electrical bolts.
Consider lowering the saturation of the Fungal growth effect as it as it doesn't look 'organic'. Alternatively update the casted 'fungal splash' effect to the player colour and keep the roots green.

General
+ Show Spoiler +

On certain resolutions (Im running on 1168 x 728) the GameHeart 1.62 interface fails to display the upgrades correctly, causing them to overlap with other UI elements (similar to the issue with the Sports Elongated interface). Im guessing this resolution isn't common for tournaments so it could be ignored.
With the addition of temporary logo textures, would it be possible to implement an animated transition effect?
Would it be possible to manage tournament, sponsors and team logos automatically? I was thinking that a central repository could be created (e.g. Liquipedia) and then users can update or add new graphics when needed. Once a week a scraper could check if any changes have occurred and retrieve the new files. This reduces the burden on you and would allow other data to be stored and incorporated into GameHeart in the future. (e.g. Could possibly display a picture of the player temporarily on the map).

Chaggi

Korea (South)1936 Posts

December 22 2013 05:56 GMT

#34

This literally boggles my mind to how awesome it is. Great job

GameHeart

286 Posts

December 22 2013 06:04 GMT

#35

STC

Thanks iHiro! I am pleasantly surprised that you found no actual bugs in the Stronger Team Color mod itself. Every issue you mentioned is either with just the test map or a suggestion.

1. Yeah I don't have the Hive set to texture swap on creation because the texture swap carries over from the hatchery > lair > hive as it morphs. So it would be a pointless use of resources.

2. Actually the thing I would want to change most is making it so the greater spire/hatcheries etc morph quickly. But I can't figure out how to do it using triggers.

3. Yeah the engineering bay does not have any STC textures.

4. That is an interesting idea, I will have to look into it.

GHMITTest

I will pass these along to the MIT Game Lab guys.

TCE

2. That is just a test map issue. Right now all the effects are set for participants only (players) so you can see them when you are testing. But when actually implemented they will all be switched to 'observer' only.

3. I stopped working on the nuke because I decided I didn't want to team color it. I think the nuke icon needs to be red or it just won't feel right. Forgot to remove the work that I had done on it already.

4. Not sure what I can do about this. It won't make any difference for players, and if a tournament is forced to use low graphics setting on their observer computer they probably shouldn't be using GameHeart in the first place. But I do need to do something with forcefields anyways so I will see if I can make them stand out more on low settings.

5. I will see what I can do though the coloring process is kind of makes that difficult.

6. I definitely don't like fungal the way it looks right now. Might have to play with the textures themselves a bit.

General

1. 99% of tournament broadcasts are done at 16x9 ratio so it does not make sense to compromise the design of the interface to support the 1%. All of our interfaces are likely to only work well at 16x9 ratios.

2. Eh maybe? Not a high priority to me. A fade in/out maybe but anything more than that adds a lot of complexity.

3. No that is not possible unfortunately. Perhaps if Blizzard gives map makers access to a player's clan decals through the editor. Maybe they already do? I haven't looked for it. Maybe they will add more stuff like that in the future for clans.

iHirO

United Kingdom1381 Posts

December 22 2013 12:40 GMT

#36

On the EU server there is an awesome arcade game called "Unit Tester 1v1" (there's also a separate single player version). It has all the buildings already constructed for ease of use and every unit, upgrade and transformation occurs instantly. So if you could apply STC to that, it would be great.

Ender985

Spain910 Posts

December 22 2013 13:57 GMT

#37

I've been waiting for team colored timewarps since they were first introduced. I don't know about coloring unit-neutral spells like forcefields or psi-storms, since they affect all units the same regardless of who casted it, but I always thought it's specially important with timewarps since they only affect enemy units. Coloring scans might be a good idea for late TvT where there are scans everywhere, to get a better sense of who sees what.

Also I loved the implementation of the important upgrade timing notifications! The only thing I would do is add a glow effect of some sort to the notification when it is completed, rather than simply changing the countdown number to "completed"; it would help it make it more visual if player 1 +1 attack completed 10 seconds before player 2 +1 carapace.

Also great idea with the sponsors showing during the start of the map, look forward to see it in play!

Overall great solid work, keep it up!

SoniC_eu

Denmark1008 Posts

December 22 2013 14:01 GMT

#38

Such a cool blog :D
Excited with all these changes and so much work being done! I hope you get to enjoy xmas, and take a little break as well. A little play doesnt hurt, when you are working hard.
<3

shiroiusagi

SoCal, USA3955 Posts

December 23 2013 01:19 GMT

#39

I am really liking that sponsorship display, that's pretty damn awesome.

philiptan

19 Posts

December 23 2013 06:13 GMT

#40

Representing the MIT Game Lab here.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone! We're really happy working with GameHeart; Ryan and Ahli have given us tons of help with advice and code. Big thanks to TotalBiscuit for the first real-world test of our code!

For the curious, the notifications are designed to allow you to customize their look using your own observer UI. Position, size, background, and opacity are all adjustable in XML. You can even hide the decimals by making that font invisible or hide all the notifications by default while keeping the rest of the GHLight features on-screen.

Reducing decimal points and duration are likely changes for the future. Observers can currently show/hide all of the notifications with Ctrl-Shift-N. Animations (glows/fades/slides) would be great but may be a lower priority than porting some of our other MIT Overseer features (e.g. in-game graphs) to GameHeart, if Ryan wants them.

For now, we're just looking closely at VODs to spot bugs and our top priority is to fix them. A big THANK YOU to everyone who has linked and identified problems! We're really curious about how the notifications looked for casters using non-English language packs. If there was a non-English stream for the Scarlett/Naniwa showmatch in which you spotted any kind of problem with the upgrade notifications, send us a link! (Any other tournament VODs which display our notifications would also be helpful.)

And to iHiro, bug hunter extraordinaire, some answers to your questions:
+ Show Spoiler +

2. Yeah, Chrono Boost is tricky because it'd mean we'd have to keep track of when Chrono Boost started, whether it'll expire before the research is complete, etc. Not impossible, but low-priority for us until it becomes a noticeable deal in actual matches.

3. We used to have an "interrupted" status but that word is confusing... it's too easily interpreted as "denied". "Paused" works the other way, it implies that the player willingly put their own upgrade on hold. (We're trying to accommodate viewers who may not play SC2.) Any suggestions for an alternate word would be great, but we may also try a graphic, like a big padlock.

4. Not intentional but the numbers displayed are still accurate. We're probably changing the timer duration in the future.

5. 7. 9. 10. All fixed and uploaded to GHMITTest (and probably to all NA GHLight maps, if the mod/pod system works as designed). Thanks!

8. This is a real bug but we haven't been able to consistently reproduce the problem. In our testing, the bug doesn't always seem to happen with the same upgrades... does it for yours?

11. We just noticed this as well. It's probably possible but messy to code a "Denied" condition in this case, because we'd have to maintain a table of every Terran building (past and present) attached to a Tech Lab to figure out whether it's still alive. Low priority but it is admittedly an irritating edge-case.

12. First-come, first-served.

13. We don't intend to implement this for 2v2, but my first guess is that we'd format the XML to make each notification smaller and halve the duration. Putting each team's notifications on opposite sides of the screen might be an option, but may collide with the leaderboard.

Thank you so much for your thorough testing!

dvorakftw

681 Posts

December 23 2013 08:23 GMT

#41

On December 22 2013 02:31 Grumbels wrote:
The upgrade window at the right, would it be possible to have it fade out over five seconds instead of just disappearing at once?

Also, instead of showing 1/100th of a second can you just show 1/10th of a second? It's too busy.

Agreed. I said this in the reddit thread already but fwiw I'll repeat here: Starting the countdown at 10 and only using tenths of a second from 5 to 0 would be the ideal configuration imo. A minor detail but minor details can make the difference between good and great.

iHirO

United Kingdom1381 Posts

December 23 2013 19:11 GMT

#42

Hi philiptan,

I loaded up the updated GHMITTest map and cannot recreate the empty 'Completed' progress bar bug, it seems that your other changes have fixed the issue.

I also noticed that the "Weapon Refit" upgrade has been renamed to "Yamato Cannon" for the notification timer, which should probably be changed or it could cause confusion.

Qwyn

United States2779 Posts

December 26 2013 02:16 GMT

#43

On December 24 2013 04:11 iHirO wrote:
Hi philiptan,

I loaded up the updated GHMITTest map and cannot recreate the empty 'Completed' progress bar bug, it seems that your other changes have fixed the issue.

I also noticed that the "Weapon Refit" upgrade has been renamed to "Yamato Cannon" for the notification timer, which should probably be changed or it could cause confusion.

I dunno man, Yamato Cannon seems a lot less fucking confusing than "Weapon Refit," lol.

Leviance

Germany4079 Posts

December 28 2013 20:53 GMT

#44

You are doing a fucking amazing job.
Make pylons (S)TC like in sc2 alpha plz

it looked awesome

iHirO

United Kingdom1381 Posts

January 09 2014 13:21 GMT

#45

On December 23 2013 15:13 philiptan wrote:
11. We just noticed this as well. It's probably possible but messy to code a "Denied" condition in this case, because we'd have to maintain a table of every Terran building (past and present) attached to a Tech Lab to figure out whether it's still alive. Low priority but it is admittedly an irritating edge-case.

I had a potential idea how to solve this the other day, although I don't know how your code is implemented.

Pseudo code mockup


if (event.Type == UPGRADE_CANCELLED)

  // Check if the upgrade was researched in a tech lab.
  if (event.Name == Stimpack || Combat_Shield || Concussive_Shells ||
                    Infernal_Pre-Igniter || Transformation_Servos || Drilling_Claws ||
                    Durable_Materials || Corvid Reactor || Caduceus Reactor || Cloaking_Field)

    // Check if a building was destroyed at the same time as the event was cancelled.
    foundMatch = Search(eventList, event.Time, &outputEvent)

    if ((foundMatch == TRUE) &&
        ((event.Name == Stimpack || Combat_Shield || Concussive_Shells) &&
         (outputEvent.Name == Barracks)) ||
        ((event.Name == Infernal_Pre-Igniter || Transformation_Servos || Drilling_Claws) &&
         (outputEvent.Name == Factory)) ||
        ((event.Name == Durable_Materials || Corvid Reactor || Caduceus Reactor || Cloaking_Field) &&
         (outputEvent.Name == Starport)))

      event.Type = UPGRADE_DENIED

philiptan

19 Posts

January 09 2014 20:00 GMT

#46

Hi iHiroic. To implement that we would need to add a new trigger to record the destruction of every Barracks/Factory/Starport in a list. That's not a huge hit in memory, but the destruction of a building is a separate trigger from the cancellation of an upgrade, so each trigger will return a different Game Time. So to compensate for that, we'll have to search for a time window. (e.g. was an upgrade cancelled within 0.5 seconds of a destruction of a Barracks/Factory/Starport?)

But now there's the possibility in which an entirely disconnected building, destroyed at the same time that a player manually cancels their own Tech Lab upgrade, results in an inaccurate "Denied" condition. This could possibly happen during a big doom drop, for instance.

So both the existing implementation and your recommendation have failure cases. The ideal solution, I'm thinking, is to record the specific building attached to each Tech Lab when an upgrade is started, and then search backwards for the status (alive/dead) of that particular building in the upgrade cancellation trigger.

By the way, our code should be publicly downloadable and viewable from Galaxy (NA Server) if we haven't messed up the upload process.

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