Of the Making of Starbow Part One

On January 24 2014 09:08 Laertes wrote:
I will be adding one of these up every Thursday when I get home.


Something Special

Bjorn “Kabel” Lindgren watched in horror from his computer screen as the Starcraft 2 Professional Terran player pulled all his workers and grouped them with his marines to attack the Zerg base. It was not an all-in: the purpose of it was not to enhance the attack but merely to free up space for more forces as the Terran continued to pump the mules that now fueled the Terran economy alone perhaps better than the SCVs.


As the Terran went on to win game,Kabel shut off his stream in disgust, he was disappointed greatly. What kind of Starcraft puts puts so much emphasis on force strength and unit composition and so little on economy and micromanagement? Surely not the kind of Starcraft he liked to watch. There had to be a better way. Kabel worked for several weeks leading up to a post he made on the Sc2 Custom Map forums. "This would indeed be the answer" he thought. “I will make a new RTS, better than BW, better than SC2!” All Kabel had that day were a box of motivations and a sack of dreams.


Though the Teamliquid Custom Maps forum was mostly reserved for melee maps and the odd UMS post on occasion, the mod initially drew enough attention that it kept Kabel motivated. The mod was far away from its current state. Though unskilled in game design as of yet, in the first few days Kabel drew at least 2 pages in attention, mostly from people that liked his attitude, but no one was falling in love with his mod, and Kabel continued on his merry way, hopeful in the fact that someday his alpha would draw attention from all over the world.


Among the current attention Kabel was drawing, however,were people with similar ambitions or visions who assumed like Kabel that their finished products would explode in popularity. Among these were a strange fellow named PBSFreeToss who wanted to conglomerate with Kabel's project, and a player with the handle of EternalLegacy. EternalLegacy was among one the earliest contributors to Kabel's project but lost interest rather quickly. Before he left for greener pastures, he had a talk with Kabel about his goals for the future. I do not want to guess at what transpired between them but EternalLegacy expressed to the community following Kabel's thread that the product should not be taken as finished. He also helped in garnering support for Kabel's project, asking people to PM Kabel. Among those who PMed Kabel was Roblin. If you've never read one of the early Roblin posts in the Starbow thread, I suggest you do so now. In addition to practically inventing the monster post method of communication between devs, Roblin helped tremendously with brainstorming, which was just what Kabel needed at the time.


As time rolled on and early January turned to late, Kabel garnered a steadily growing support for his mod. Another early mind for the Starbow was the first master, Danko. Danko was a veteran of BW and hated SC2. He longed for the days when larvae was not just an expendable side thought. His push towards this was one of the reasons for Kabel's inspiration to include larvae production limits nearly a month later. Meanwhile, Kabel was getting his sea legs in terms of design. Now he was attacking big problems such as the queen head on and things were going well as more people joined up. On February 1st, Robin posted what would become the very first "monster post". Monster posts were big posts designed to attack big problems.


They were hugely effective ways to spur thoughts and get ones ideas out if one had the patience to discuss in this manner. Robin first monster post attacked the queen problem like it was nothing. He used big math to support his post and contributed greatly to the discussion all at the same time. Surely a hopeful Kabel must have felt uplifting pride at once that he had spurred this on when he read the full post; I bet he couldn't help but feel hopeful, something was happening after all. Kabel and Roblin were doing heavy work and more happened from there. Zaphod Beeblebrox, another longstanding member, join around this time.


Starbow was getting somewhere it seemed, but would things soon change? What would happen to this strange little mod? These are questions which will be answered in my later blogs. Till next time folks!

On January 24 2014 09:30 MysteryMeat1 wrote:


I just put in paragraphs.