+ Show Spoiler +Archives - All Doors Table of Contents + Show Spoiler +- Door 1: Retarded Units
- Door 2: Cygnus[X.1] Sings!
- Door 3: Quiz: The Engine
- Door 4: Progamer Incidents
- Door 5: Super Strategies
- Door 6: Bakuryu Replay Mega Pack
- Door 7: Semi Island Tournament
- Door 8: Quiz Results
- Door 9: Broodwar's AI
- Door 10: Ultimate War Simulation
- Door 11: Savior Article
- Door 12: Pimpest Plays 2006 "Highlights"
- Door 13: Mondragon vs. Reach
- Door 14: Icy Map Tournament
- Door 15: Community Quiz
- Door 16: Race Wars!
- Door 17: Defiler Replays
- Door 18: Movies!
- Door 19: Nal_rA Pack
- Door 20: Showmatch Rekrul Style
- Door 21: FFA Tournament
- Door 22: Misc
- Door 23: The final count down
- Door 24: ICCup Attack feat. G5
Door 1 + Show Spoiler +Retarded Units If you played more than a few games online, especially when you used Protoss, you know how buggy units and buildings can be. Who of us honestly never raged about stupid reavers, that couldn't destroy a single worker after 5 shots? Who never had to spend way too much time to get a Goliath past minerals? Not to mention Dragoon bugs, Mines that decide to explode like whenever, but not now, or Lurkers burrowing their way across a choke rather than burrow where they should. My personal favourite are Probes that take a sight seeing tour in the area of my gateways instead of going to mine at my expansion. Seems to be a lot of fun for them. Anyhow, this kind of stuff it what makes Broodwar special, don't you think? At least it is for me. And I guess the same thought occured to a guy called Commodore - a movie maker. He created two short clips about the so called Artificial Intelligence. Definitely worth a look! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCpUsmuQG3E&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eb7o1ArBHg8&feature=player_embedded Door 2 + Show Spoiler +Cygnus[X.1] Sings! There are different reasons why I still hang around in the scene. One of them is the amazing creativity that shows from time to time. This door features such an example of the weird and yet incredible things that make me facepalm, giggle like a stupid premature girl and keep me here. The creators of the famous replay analyzing tool BWChart released a lot more software than you might think, in a time where this kind of tools were completely new. Back then you hadn't had much broadwith, at least it was not to be taken for granted here in Germany. Thus VODs and Casts were not an every-day event - so replays were the stuff to download. With the introduction of RWA, Replay-with-Audio, basically a new perspective was given: any player with a mic could cast his personal favourite games. Another player with the same tool could listen to it then, after downloading only a few mega bites. Surprisingly few players used that tool, maybe because you still had to scroll on your own. The only page that really offered more of those RWAs was hosted by Manifesto - whom you might know. Now, casting is kinda easy, everybody with enough self esteem can do that. Casts range from cool and funny to boring and shitty . A guy called Cygnus[X.1] however did what a real artist does: expand and fully use the possibility of the new tool. I'm so happy that his RWA was recorded as VOD and uploaded to google.videos. Go and watch that, it's really entertaining. And really freaky. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERMbVlJozho&feature=player_embedded Door 3 + Show Spoiler +Quiz: The Engine The third door of the Calendar is the first of the interactive doors - after all it's quite boring to only read or watch stuff. It could be a little challenging, but still a lot of fun! Test your knowledge about Starcraft Broodwar in a Quiz. You can score 40 points, with the questions ranging from quite easy to quite hard. Most questions do not aim for general community-esque knowledge and are more about how much you actually know about the engine. It sure will be interesting, and I'm kinda excited to see whether someone is able to answer everything correctly! Note that the correct answers aren't given right away, they will be posted in one of the upcoming doors. Maybe as full content, maybe only as sidenote. Hopefully this way everyone can participate, even if RL keeps you away from TL.net today. I suggest that the others really think hard about the possible solutions and read LiquiPedia if they're not sure. It's not a guarantee that it will help you in any case - there still should be quite a few tricky questions be left over. It would be also quite cool if you would keep quiet even IF you know all of the 3-Point-Questions. Oov shows you the way! Door 4 + Show Spoiler +Progamer Incidents Neat little stories, interviews and a glimpse behind the scenes, that's what today's feature is all about. If you had problems to solve the second Calendar Quiz, you might find a few answers in the threads I'm going to link. After all, Broodwar is more than just a game, especially when it comes to Korea. We all enjoyed Nal_rA's Oldboy show, to see what Pros are like when they're not playing games. Well, a few weeks ago Caesarion linked me to those. I wasn't aware of the so called Pro Gamer Incidents - some sort of article serires published by the Korean PGR21 team back in 2005. Highly entertaining, and definitely worth the time! Door 5 + Show Spoiler +Super Strategies Some of my allies were pretty much into noob theorycrafting. It's a pretty stupid thing to do, but on LANs NoMaK, Fleischmann, ips.ReTrooper, noob)hot( and me enjoyed to make up stupid strategies that would never work out. NoMaK- even made a tribute-homepage for this where he listed all the super serious gaming magazine "cheat strategies" that had a 100% guarantee to win you every game, even when you would suffer from brain damage. When I started to translate them, I thought most of them weren't that funny anymore. In the end you, my audience, should be able to smile about them. Anyhow, one strategy suggested a Boxer-esque move: you should lift your command center and fly away. You should type your nick and "has left the game" into the chat. So, your opponent would leave the game after he recognized all spawning positions were actually empty, assuming there was a bug. I never, ever thought any person would be stupid enough to fall for that, so it has been quite a surprise when I found this clip on YouTube years later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgrJRAoaUrQ Well, this clip alone is not worth an entry in the Calendar, at least not in my eyes. I wanted to do a write up and a few battle reports of the famous "IdoGayStrats" from... 2004 or something like that. This was some random guy with a decent skill who bashed newbies on battle.net; like using The Stove or performing proxy-hatchery-sunken-rushes. Those were kind of entertaining. Sadly, all mirrors of the replays and screenshots are offline. Then noob)hot( reminded me that there was something even better. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: the most stupid strategies on earth. This website will not only boost your play by over 9000, it will also make you facepalm on every second sentence. If you are going to use these at iCCup or Fish, make sure to record an FPVOD or post Screens & replays here. Thanks in advance! Door 6 + Show Spoiler +Bakuryu Replay Mega Pack Some players are good, but a little cocky. Other players are good, but rarely post in the public. Then again, there are those players who are really good, participate in almost every tournament and, on top of it all, do a shitload of things to help out. One of these outstanding gamers is LRM)Bakuryu - the famous, sympathic and always happy Mustachezerg from Germany. He walks the extra mile. When I was admin at iCCup he was one of the few that would help out, give constructive feedback and take a few hours (!) to sit down with the new beginners in iCCup Training Program. When I ran out of ideas for the Advents Calendar Bakuryu jumped in: and provided us the gift of 666 replays of his most recent games. Those are from ladders, tournaments and other events. Highly recommended! A big shoutout to Bakuryu! Also, a big thanks to Esc4ton (click it) for hosting this files on his FTP. Door 7 + Show Spoiler +Calendar Tournament Today's little surprise will hopefully bring you on the servers: in cooperation with the iCCup staff and Hacklebeast, we're going to host a little theme tournament! Details: Server: iCCup - The Abyss Channel: X-mas Time: 18:00 GMT (+00:00) Maps: 815 - Coulee - Arkanoid - Monty Hall Stream: Hacklebeast on Twitch.tv Sign Up +++ Map DownloadThe maps are quite oldschool and you probably never heard of them, if you're not too much into StarCraft. I picked maps that still should be quite balanced after all - I actually thought of making an island tournament with maps like Neo Forbidden Zone, simply to revive the very old memories. That wouldn't be much fun for different races though, especially on NFZ, the map Testie made his 100-0 PvT record on. So why these maps? They are fun, and they enable me to show you some matches that are definitely worth watching. The motto is: if you can't participate or join the stream at least, you should at least be able to get something in return. So: here are some good matches on the maps, and a little background. 815815 was a map used in 2006 Pringles MSL Season I. It's neither a total air map, nor semi-air - but not a standard melee map either. The ramps connecting your main base and your natural are very small, every thing larger than a Marine for example will not be able to pass. This forces you to play different, ordinary builds will not work. This lead to a few good moves, many of them were featured in the Pimpest Plays. Since most games are quit short lived and are only how to abuse Unit glitches to get up and down a ramp, I highly recommend you take a look at the famous triple play of Boxer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVVufajjZKo&t=3m CouleeCoulee was used in Blizzard's Mystery Map Invitational Tournament. This one is definitely a semi-air map as minerals block your way out, but still: I wouldn't classify it as completely imbalanced straight up. Generally Protoss outplays Zerg on such maps. But not if you're Yellow going up against the Mantoss. Reach couldn't help but lose, even when he pulled off another nice stunt that earned him a spot in Pimpest Plays: + Show Spoiler [VOD Links] +http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2k_EGZ19q4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwHI04tx_lE& http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar3rNvBvuxk ArkanoidNeo Arkanoid was part of ShinHan OSL 2006 .It's quite similar to Coulee, with the only difference being that the Main base is sourrounded by neutral buildings - just like the two in-base expansions are blogged with some sort of eggs. This map is definitely playable, and featured one of the best Terran vs. Zerg games I have ever seen: Iris vs. Savior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwkQvnZOFdw&feature=player_embedded Monty HallMonty Hall is one of the very few maps that literally forced people to play different, as it enables a couple of very odd moves. Again, same structure as Coulee, but a little different, as the distances are quite large with three paths leading to your opponent's main base. Numerous good plays have been played on this particular map, which makes it quite had to chose the best. To prevent you from doing "the standard" cheese on this map, or let's say to warn your opponent, let's take a look at this Pimp build: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDNMvEVtInA Gratulations to the tournament winner: Nb.Lossilohi! Also, cheers to the second placed NinaZerg and her Puns! Door 8 + Show Spoiler +Quiz Results Today's door will give you the answers for the Engine Quiz of Door IV. The questions were quite hard, so don't feel bad if you couldn't score very high. I hope that you will read this to the end, as some of the solutions may include a few new things for you! So, I guess many of you want to know how they did quite badly. Before you do, remember that the solutions are worth a read, too! Gratulations to GhostClaw - he almost had the perfect score. I wasn't sure anyone would be so good, but I guess you can't beat TL! 1 & 2 Point Questions + Show Spoiler +Replays were introduced with what Patch?Patch 1.08 enabled you to save replays. Apparently there have been fan made tools that could create replays even before this patch - but those were not official. In which year did the last WCG with SCBW take place?SCBW was featured at WCG 2010 for the last time. If you somehow missed this event, I can recommend the Jaedong vs. Flash Semi Finals! Definitely one of the best sets of last year. The first official WCG 2001 took place in which city? The first 'official' WCG took place in Seoul, South Korea. I thought you could have guessed that, since most early WCG events were hosted in Asia. SCBW is known for its balance. Which patch had the last balance changes? This should be common knowledge: the last balance changes have been done with Patch 1.08. This patch has been released in May 2001 - which means that BW hasn't had any balance updates for over ten years! Easter Egg: Which Building has a small man hidden in its wire-frame?BW always had a lot of fan-based organized Ladders. Which one was put down by hackers for good?ICCup's "predecessor" was PGTour; it was basically the very same thing, the same ranking system, the same system of MOTWs (with an additional Map of the Season) and so on. In September 2006 the page was hit by a hacker attack and went down for good shortly afterwards. This had been a hard blow for the foreign community. And which Ladder was officially supported by Blizzard in regular Battle.net?WGTour.com was a fan organized ladder. Unlike ICCup or Fish it had no own server and used the European Battle.net for years. If you wanted to play, you had to search for your opponent in a channel and add the scores via web site later on. With Patch 1.15 Blizzard officially announced a cooperation with WGTour - this is why you have a „League“ Button in your battle.net menue. Story: Kerrigan was betrayed and left behind on whose orders? She was left behind on Arkturus Mengsk's orders. Optical Flare on mines does...The same as on other unit. Why shouldn't it? It's kinda pointless to use it though, since mines already do have a very small vision range. A famous bug was called...The Flying Drone bug is kinda famous and shows that Blizzard's patches were not always that flawless. In theory that patch should have been fixed with update 1.09, but left open a door for another version of this bug that needed to get fixed in 1.10. I don't know about you, but I saw that Bug at least one time out of twenty matches against Zerg - no idea why. Before the last balance patch was released 5 Pool was a quite hard strategy to counter. Why?We already learned that Patch 1.08 brought the last balance changes. I don't know much about the scene back then, but I do recall playing BW in LAN with friends. 5 Pool was definitely a shit thing to do, especially when we played Blood Bath - the Pool was only 150 minerals back then. Any mana-upgrade (Arbiter, HT, Queen, Defiler, ...) has what additional effect?Every spell caster (Arbiter, High Templar, Defiler ...) get's more initial mana when he is trained - but only if the mana upgrade was researched. That's kinda nice when you have to use them a lot. There is a limit of the number of Waypoints you can use. What's the limit?You can give any unit 10 Way points. It took me a while to figure that out, due to the fact that a way point gets taken off the list when it passes the first way point. And stupid me, I sent my initial SCV around the map like a maniac and forgot to count it. A transport unit (Overlord, Shuttle, Dropship)... Any transporting unit, or any air unit without attack, will immediately retreat from enemy fire when it's moving with the patrol command. That's a neat trick for beginners, that aren't able to control their harass all the way down without letting their macro slip. Definitely worth remembering! When the spell lockdown is used on an observer... This question is shamelessly stolen from a Broodwar.de 'Trivia' thread of 2005. Lockdown will take away an observer's ability to move, reveal it and additionally temporarly block it's ability to detect invisible units. Parasite casted on a Wraith...Parasite works on Wraith. It will reveal them all the time, so even if they are cloaked. The only way to circumvent that is to use a medic. That is if you don't want to destroy it. Ensnare lasts for? (Speed: Fastest)This is a little tricky. In my first draft of the Quiz I left out the „Speed: Fastest“ hint. According to Blizzard Ensnare lasts for 40 seconds - which is way too long if you actually use it in a ladder game. This is due to the fact that official Blizzard information is always for 'Speed: Fast' (which was btw the speed for original Blizzard Battle.net Ladder), whereas the big ladders like Fish and ICCup use Fastest as default. On fastest ensnare only lasts around 25 seconds. According to the original Starcraft printed manual...This is more of a, well, guess-it question. I didn't know for sure at least. According to Blizzard's Manual Ultralisks could use a battle cry to support bystanding friendly units. I have no idea if this was actually meant serious or not. Which of the following Maps were never in the WCG mappool?This question was apparently harder than I thought. WCG has had a long history for SCBW. I actually tried to give you enough options you could rule out - so you could answer it by knowing the wrong options. Jungle Story should be quite famous of Boxer's Drop Ship Micro against Nazgul and Smuft. Chow Chow aka. Martian Cross, well, it's ok if you haven't heard of them, but those were quite known maps as well. Last map of WCG Map Pool mentioned here is „Gorky Park“ - the map where FiSheYe won his only game against ogogo in WCG 2003's finale . So the correct answer would be: Requiem. The Hardcore Part Until here the solution to the Quiz may be a bit boring. The hardcore part should test your ultimative Trivia knowledge - things you may know but probably never bring to use. I was told, sadly only yesterday afternoon, that one of the questions was wrongly formulated and thus may made you pick the correct answer for the wrong reason. Sounds a little, well, complicated, because it is. Trivia: Hallucinations Three of the questions have something to do with Hallucination. While this spell has a lot of fascinating little things to it, it's barely used both in Korea and in foreign games. This is due to the fact that it's quite expensive while giving you small benefits. I can't remember many games this spell was used effectively in the term of “game changing” - of course there are those rare opportunities like Nal_rA's recall. Anyhow: any hallucination is a clone of the original unit. The most important fact is, that this clone only is more or less only a 'Beta' version of it's target: it's more vulnerable as it takes twice the amount of damage and it has no upgraded features. This means a caster can not use any kind of spell, like a hallucination of a High Templar can't use storm - even if you have it upgraded. If we follow that logic, we can see that a hallucination of a Siege Tank in Siege Mode can not unsiege - this feature needs to be upgraded. It can not move.A Queen however can infest a Command Center right after being trained. Thus a hallucination of a Queen can infest a Command Center. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY978OENtu4 This is very pointless information, but was still news to me until last winter. On top of it all, and this is only bonus information, a player actually can un-infest a Command Center. If a Queen enters the burning building SCVs still have a narrow time window to repair the structure and kick out the Queen. Again, it was news to me until I saw Bakuryu vs. sas.Non in ICCup's Clan Tournament. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDtfJIHENo One more thing: hallucinations can endure special spells: they can be healed for once. They can be repaired and use Shield Batteries. However, other spells like Recall, EMP, Stasis or Psi Storm will immediately destroy any hallucination the moment they affect them. I fell for this once at a LAN when one of my allies ( BaD]Anti- ) made me recall a bunch of probes to make fun of my non-leaving opponent. Well bad idea. The spell Feedback is one of the spells that doesn't work like it should. Since a few people messaged me earlier: I'm not sure if it creates an error message or if it will destroy the hallucinations - but it will not work correctly and therefore the right option was can not be done. According to both Blizzard and Liquipedia this should be true; however, even with all three other options given, you could pick the right choice after all. Sorry if it wasn't clear enough. Ensnare on Workers In my opinion, this is by far the most interesting question - even if you can not use it at all. Ensnare on Interceptors has an effect, I only created this option to confuse you. Plague on Interceptors does work too, but there are bugs that can destroy those Interceptor, why some leagues and ladders forbade that move for a long time. The correct option is that Ensnare has no effects on harvesting workers. The thing with workers is that they will always harvest exactly eight minerals or eight vespene gas. So this does not change. After all, ensnare should slow workers down on their way from minerals to main building and the other way round. Now, if you add this up, ensnared workers should harvest less money while being ensnared than non-ensnared workers. Correct? ETBrooD wrote a topic over at broodwar.de a few years ago where he toyed around with workers and ensnare. He used ensnare multiple times on workers and actually came to the conclusion that ensnare does indeed not change the amount of minerals harvested compared to other workeres - it doesn't even sum up over time. My first thought was that the 25 seconds ensnare lasts will not have much of an effect, but if you used ensnare three or four times on the workers whenever the past one wore off, there should be a difference. Well there isn't. I (and a few bw.de users back then) re-created this test three of four times against the CPU and my results point the same way. It's very, very odd, as the workers do move slower with ensnare on them. ETBrooD tried to ensnare a single worker and a bunch of workers and couldn't find the solution to this problem, as this was not helping either. What he found out was that some workers sometimes stop before returning from the minerals, if the patches are placed in a special angle. They do not do this when they are ensnared. But this is not the case for all workers. I personally assume that ensnare does not work in the ordinary way on workers, because workers use a different command when they harvest minerals/gas: the “Gather” command. Hopefully, this was intersting enough for you. It's amazing that SCBW can still have few surprises left for you, when you think you seen it all. Bonus: Mineral Report by joinkerDoor 9 + Show Spoiler +Door IX: Broodwar's AI Today's feature is about the CPU and the so called „Artifical Intelligence“ of SCBW. We already covered this and that about path finding, especially how retarded units can be. Compared to any other modern RTS SCBWs AI is just horrible - if you're a somewhat experienced gamer you can fight against at least three of opponents at once without having too much trouble. I found a neat article that explains why that is over at the German fan page broodwar.de. Thanks for letting me use their content! What's the AI doing there? Everybody comes up with this question at some point. Why is it this bad, why doesn't it use a somewhat good build order, why does it stop to produce things suddenly or attack random targets? Oh, and why does it prefer units like queens and scouts? I wanted to give an answer in a small article and explain how the SCBW-AI actually works. The Quest To Find Bugs: I started off with a little test. I just opened a random map and started to play Terran vs. Terran against the CPU. My goal was to get a vulture in the opponent's base as fast as possible. You can see why when you look at the picture below. I attacked the SCVs that were constructing buildings (and obviously killed them) which already outsmarted the AI. It just ignores the unfinished buildings, because it apparently likes it that way. The next picture shows that the AI has a lot of idle workers. Those don't like the hard mining and harvesting gas is not a nice job either as it seems. So, let's try to produce even more bugs: I started to kill every worker but nothing else. Turns out that the AI doesn't think it's neccessary to reproduce them. Instead the last bits of money are invested in some sort of weird firebat attack that should end my life once and for all. Ok, but why does the CPU behave like that? Basic Prinicple The best way to understand the AI is to download a tool called SCAIEdit and toy around with it a little. This software isn't exactly modern or the best there is, but it's relatively easy to handle. It won't take much until you finally get to realize: indeed, the AI is really „pretty stupid“. The reason: it gets very specific orders with only few exceptions. There is no room to react to the player's actions. But that does not explain the bugs we have seen earlier. So, let's take a look at our first problem - unfinished buildings standing around in the scenery. The reason is that AI only knows the timing (when to build) and the number (how many) of special structures (what to build). As a consequence a structure is finished, or done for the build order the AI follows, when the SCV puts down the Depot. Well, if the process gets stopped (by killing the SCV) - bad luck. Next point: why the idle SCVs? This is a though question and I can only guess. I assume that SCVs are (maybe) used to defend - so they quite likely were ordered to attack when I started to shoot at the building SCV, but received no order to mine again. But: why doesn't it build workers again, after losing all of them? Same explanation as for the first „bug“: it would be wise to do so, sure, but there is no note in the AI's build order commanding it to train workers again, nor telling it that they were any important to the overall strategy. The consequence is that the CPU doesn't do it. Routines Let's go deeper. I mentioned the build order the AI is following; doesn't mean that this is completely static process though. There is still the possibility that the CPU will react to special buildings. But the chosen „reaction“ itself is just another kind of build order. And, as we already saw, there are ways to screw up the AI again. It is possible with the use of some smart moves to stop the computer from building things like a Facility or a Cybernetics Core for over ten minutes. Moreover, even the type and number of units is a fixed part of the schedule. And that's were the next problem arises. If the build tells the CPU to build four carriers it will do nothing but build those units - the build order only changes once the last carrier was purchased. That means that even if the buildings that are neccessary to train the last missing carrier get destroyed, the CPU will not adapt in any way and reproduces all things that are neccessary all over again: pylon, gateway, core, stargate, beacon, carrier. That's a clear disadvantage. Many smart snipes of several things will give you quite a lot of time this way. Offense If the CPU is lucky enough to gather enough units it will attack eventually. It will work like this: the AI waits until all units are trained; after that it will classify them as internal „attacking“ group. There is only one of these groups at any time. Now all units are sent to some area which wasn't enemy territory when the group was completed. It's a little too much to define what „enemy territory“ means here, so let's go with „area where the enemy built any kind of structure“. Thats kind of problematic again. What was neutral territory at the end of the classification process doesn't need to be neutral anymore but could be an enemy stronghold. Which means that the AI happily walks into an ambush. Sometimes it won't even try to defend itself, and just wants to pass the territory. The consequences are obvious. However, if there was no problem up to this point, the commando will take a short break, to sometimes wait for reinforcements or whatever, and then start to attack. I have no idea how the destination area for confrontations are chosen. And the same goes for the targets. Only one thing is for sure: the first things to be eliminated are units and buildings that could retaliate. This kind of behaviour can be observed the best on siege tanks. They will automatically siege whenever a fighting unit crosses their path. Useless Units Ok, so offense isn't exactly the AI's strong suit. But why does it build those useless units? Nobody ever would waste money on scouts. The AI does it, and for an obvious reason. Blizzard seemed to think it would be a nice idea to list all units when it comes to the CPU-strategy. Therefore the AI is training anything it can. Of course this has no relation to todays strategies. If you were to re-code the source, you could simply leave out those units. Defense Now for the defense. At first you need to understand that all areas with buildings on them are divided into different districts. The main base would be such a district, whenever the computer expands he creates a new one. Every district gets a bunch of units with the assignment to defend it. Other units only help out when they are in the area for some reason. An example: if you were to attack a gateway, a just trained Zealot would quite likely help out. If you were to attack an expansion, however, there won't be any units coming from the CPU's main base for the rescue. Because it's the job of the defending units in the expansion district. Expanding Behaviour Last bot not least: the AI is pretty good when it comes to expanding. There is nothing that can be compared to its ability to cover the whole map. The only downside: it would be a good idea to actually place Command Centers/Hatcheries/Nexi in the right position. You should be able to understand the habits of the AI in SCBW a bit better now, and might have an idea why it does all these odd things. by ChickenLordThere is more that could be said about this topic. For once, there was the Polish foreign Zerg Blackman, a very strong player. An urban legend, if it's true or not - I'm not sure, told that he was training mainly against a selfmade CPU for his matches, because his internet connection sucked. But enough of the trivia that will not help you. There was, or is, again I'm not sure, a complete sub scene that did a lot with the AI. It's worth a look, definitely, if you want to learn a bit more. If you however have to face a period of time, when you'll not be able to connect to the internet, those kids might help you out. There are plenty of differently coded bots there ranging from easy to very hard. I remember downloading an AI that beat the shit out of me, even when I was C rank at PGTour. I highly recommend to visit the coders page and download some of their stuff. It's worth it, even if you're an advanced player. Don't worry, the explanations how to install and set those things up are quite easy, even a tech noob like me can do it. There were even competitions between the coders, and those brought up quite amazing results. Since I thought a huge wall of text might scare you off easily, I just drop the last and, again highly recommended, link to an awesome article by 2010's StarCraft AI Championship winner here: srsly, take a look if you don't know it already! Door 10 + Show Spoiler +Ultimate War Simulation Ever since SCII was announced the BW Elitists had to face a lot of players that never even touched Broodwar. We all know, and we all have to read a lot of stupid trolling - coming from both: BW die-hards and rookies. This is highly pointless and most times a really big shame for both sides. Well, I guess that's how internets works after all. One of the big topics that are fought over as if they were some sort of war between religions is the balancing. The "what SCII is cool at", or if you prefer the usual BW Elitist view "why SCII sucks". At first this did not interest me much, then it started to amuse me, as most troll topics do, and now they annoy me. Suddenly, I remembered a news I found on gosugamers a long, long while ago. It hit me quite hard, as the news featured a funny blog that described how the biggest kick-ass RTS should have been made, and why all RTS are for pussies. It is the perfect satire about all of those discussions, and to round it up, features a lot of Broodwar sidenotes. It's amazingly accurate and has a bonus for Jack Nicholson fans. Door 11 + Show Spoiler +Savior Article You may not know the problem, but back in the days, when I started to play online, the media wasn't too fond of computer games. Actually, they were quite indifferent, they just wrote a lot of trash here in Germany, whenever some sort of school shooting took place. It was a sad story, especially when all games were blamed. I actually wanted to translate a few of them, but... it's not quite in the spirit of the Calendar if you get my meaning. In the last years the public opinion shifted and the press adapted to the new situation. Nobody wanted to read the same story about how cyber killers were created, and how Counterstrike trained you to kill your fellow neighbours. Some magazines and news papers even started to discover the South Korean scene. With the background of the WCG 2008 in Cologne suddenly good and informative little articles were published. The one that I wanted to translate was about sAviOr - which is interesting even with all the match fixing. The article gives a little insight about the whole machinery behind e-Sport in Korea, the training conditions and the reception of the broad audience. Huge thanks go out to Quint who not only gave me tips for the translation, but did all the super-duper cool write up himself. Without him the article would have been quite unprofessionally translated, so give him much love! Warriors of the Internet South Korea is a paradise for computer gamers - every third South Korean plays. Some of them even make a living from it, like Ma Jae-yoon, also known as „Savior“, a pop star of the scene who has to save the universe again and again in front of a major audience. Anne Schneppen reports from Seoul. Outside, the fans have been waiting for him for hours, screaming, waving flags, holding banners and mascots up for their idol. He calls himself Savior, the defender of the virtual universe, and is celebrated like a rockstar in South Korea. Ma Jae-yoon, who is also known as Maestro, is the champion who sets the benchmark for everyone else. Backstage, people are busy with last-minute preperations: cables are being laid and TFTs and speakers tested. Dressed in a white space suit, which is covered with the logos of his sponsors, Ma leaves his dressing room, pale and nervous. His coach gives him some final advice, then Ma heads for the make up room. An army of helpers is surrounding him, one covers his pimples, another one does his hair. Ma doesn’t say a word. He spends his last minutes before the match in meditative concentration, probably already rallying his troops and adjusting laser cannons in his mind. Savior against Midas, battle of the titans. They don't kick balls, don't swing bats - they move bits and bites. 'We need more energy, Commander!' Ma is a computer gamer, his discipline is called 'Starcraft'. He has been the best player in South Korea for months. His income as a professional is about 300 Million Won per year, 250.000 Euro, including the prizes from tournaments. His fanclub has 17,000 registered members. Every time the twenty-year-old champion plays a match, hundreds of thousands tune in, with two TV stations broadcasting 24 hours nothing else but the art of professional computer gaming. The E-Sports-stadium in Seoul is on the top floor of an ordinary department store. It is Wednesday afternoon, and the arena is filled to the rafters. Fanfares and fog machines set the mood when Savior and Midas take their seats in two transparent boxes that look as if they had just descended from space. A gigantic screen shows how their armies are forming battle lines. Then the battle for galactic domination begins, only understood by insiders. Thousands of warriors and hundreds of space ships are shown on the screen, only to end in a burning inferno shortly afterwards. „We are under attack! You need reinforcements! More energy, Commander!“ „No country can compete with us!“ The year is 2499 A.D. Somewhere near the edge of the galaxy, the Terrans fight for survival, especially against the hideous Zerg, who invade entire solar systems with their sheer numbers. Equally dangerous are the Protoss, who eradicate all life on the planet Chau Sara. Faster than a piano virtuoso, Savior’s hands fly over the keyboard with blurring speed. „These soldiers fight for me. Every soldier is but mine alone and controlled by me, doing my every bidding,“, said the slender professional when he tried to explain his fascination with the game. According to Kim Tae-hyung, Starcraft commentator, it is very clear why Koreans are the best players: „We are extremely fast, love strategy games, electronics and the internet. Our fingers are nimble and we love the competiton. No country can compete with us.“ Extremely fast internet Korea is a paradise for computer gamers. Around 18 million people, more than a third of the population, are registered members of an online game. Six out of ten Koreans between nine to 39 think of themselves as „regular online gamers“. There are five million active Starcraft players, with one million playing on the net during weekends. Starcraft was released by the American company Blizzard in 1998, when the internet boom started in South Korea. Back then, after the financial crisis in Asia had ended, the goverment was desperately searching for growing markets and eventually decided on the internet. After only a few years, a so far unprecedented broadband network had been created. 25.000 public computer gaming rooms Today, most schools, almost 80% of all households and all unversities have access to such a high speed connection. The „PC Bangs“ are also extremely popular, public gaming rooms where people can connect to a high-speed-LAN for only one Euro per hour and play millions of so called multi-user-games (MPU) until their keyboards are on fire. There are around 25.000 of these PC Bangs in South Korea. „As if I had been sucked into a black hole“ For the past six years, Ma aka Savior has been playing nothing but Starcraft. „I was addicted to the game, as if I had been sucked into a black hole“, he remembers his first years as an amateur. Back then, he spent days and nights with his friends at a PC Bang, eventually even dropping out of school. He was lucky and discovered by a „talent scout“ and managed to realise the dream of million Korean teenagers: He is the star of the professional team CJ Entus, which is sponsored by the food company CJ to spice up their image. The company supports fifteen players, warriors, but clean lads - no smoking and no alcohol. They live like cadets in a military academy under the patriarchalic supervision of their coaches in an old family home located in the expensive south of Seoul. There, Ma Jae-yoon takes off his sneakers after a match. The shared flat of professional gamers is his home. Confuzian Values „At first, it was very difficult for me to get used to this place, especially with all the cleaning,“ he said, tired after a match that he lost – a rare occasion. Discipline, hierarchy and obedience are the rules of the gamer community, Confuzian values: The rookie has to make his way to the top by serving and paying respect to the older members. Hemust never challenge the authority of his teacher. The seven weakest players of the team share a dorm in the basement, they also have to do the majority of the household chores. The stars live upstairs, but even Ma, who has a lot of privileges as champion, has to share a room with one if his teammates. Only some stuffed animals, gifts of loving and devouted fans, give the sparse room a bit of a personal touch. Eight hours of practice per day The structuring of the training is very strict, women are not welcome for visits. At nine o‘ clock in the morning the alarm clock rings, after lunch the CJ-Entus bus takes the players to a fitness centre and a short workout of stetching and treadmill jogging. Back at home, their cook has already finished their meal, which is followed by two sessions of practice, each four hours long. „Two sessions à four hours have proven to be the most efficient,“ said Kim Dong-woo, the trainer, a former professional player. Around 11‘ o clock in the evening, the training ends and the players could go to sleep if they wanted to. Most players, however, are still playing, hidden in the long rows of computer monitors, destroying worlds and rescueing planets, sipping on their vitamin juices, often until 3‘ o clock in the morning „Because they want to,“ Kim assured. Only Ma, the champion, rarely does extra hours: „He is a bit lazy, but a real prodigy.“ "We have the mindset of warriors“ There are no countries with more computer gamers than in South Korea. The national inter-trade organisation KeSPA counts 326 players, with 236 of them playing Starcraft. Twelve professional teams compete in different competitions, and even the South Korean air force has its own team. Every team has its own sponsor who has his own agentda to participate in E-Sports: „Khan“ is sponsored by the electronics giant Samsung, „Hero“ by the broadcasting station MBC Game, „T1“ is part of the South Korean telephone provider SK Telecom. The branch is growing and E-Sports is becoming a real cash cow: Eight years ago, 72 tourneys had a total of 1,5 million Euro as prize money, today there are 280 competitions funded with more than six million Euro. The big finals are usually visited by up to 120,000 spectators. The biggest lobbyist of Korean E-Sports is doing so well that he can already be compared to the crème de la crème of the insurance or automobile sector. Close to the government disctrict, Je Hun-ho is sitting in his black leather armchair behind a cherrywood desk and talks about his favourite topic: Why are doing Koreans so well in computer games, especially in Starcraft or Warcraft? Je Hun-ho thinks that it is an inherent gift: „We have the mindset of warriors and we like to compete against each other. This is why we prefer multiplayer- and online games.“ World leader in software developement Je Hun-ho has a very big vision: „E-Sports as an olympic discipline, that is my dream.“ The fascination for him, the goverment and the sponsors is the potential: In 2006, the market for computer games generated 1,8 billion Won (1,5 Billion Euro), for this year the National Institute for Game Development and Support estimate 2,2 billion Won. Regarding software development, South Korea is the global market leader, followed by America and China. The global value of this sector is estimated at 25 billion Dollar and is expected to more than double in two years. For the game Lineage, made in South Korea and played by 117 Million players worldwide, virtual products are sold and bought with real money. A magical sword is worth 2500 Euro. Cyber World Cup 2008 in Cologne „There is no way back. Games are the language of our children, and if you want to communicate with them, you should get used to it.“ You could almost believe Oh Won-suk speaks of a revolution: According to the marketing expert, games are a global movement, a new culture of spare time activity. First and foremost, however, he is interested in profits. His agency, International Cyber Marketing (ICM), organises the „World Cyber Games“. Seven years ago, seventeen countries participated in the competition. This year, seventy countries are expected in Seattle. The event is supported by the South Korean electronics company Samsung, but Microsoft has also taken interest in the tournament. „Sponsors use the event to advertise their mobilphones, monitors or MP3 players,“ said ICM vice-president Oh. A few minutes ago it was decided that the next World Cyber Games in 2008 will take place in Cologne. Heart failure, dehydration or exhaustion Two percent of the South Korean population are classified as highly addicted, one in ten is at risk. Five years ago, computer games claimed their first death. Today, there are a few dozen. The cases are very similar: After thirty, sixty or even ninety hours in a PC Bang, the addicts collapsed and died because of heart failure, dehydration or exhaustion. Outside of Ma Jae-yoon's team house, there are not only young fans waiting, but also ambitious parents. „Only a few years ago, our occupation and work were not taken seriously,“ said trainer Kim, who didn’t reveal his passion to his family for a long time, with a smile on his face. „Today, fathers take their childrento us and say : ‚My son has a special gift, please watch him play!‘“ The eighteen-year-old student Ko-un has brought with her a golden pig, a good-luck for the next match of her idol Savior. „To speak with him only one time, just the two of us!“ Ma Jae-yoon enjoys the attention and being worshipped. He sends his prize money to his mother. He dreams of a Mercedes-Benz sports car. Door 12 + Show Spoiler +Pimpest Plays 2006 "Highlights" There are only few international customs - one of them is the tradition of "April Fools". No further need for explanations I guess. Who doesn't know all the little pranks Blizzard does every year. A few of them are actually funny. That's the stupid thing about first of April: you don't really laugh at most things that are published, you don't really facepalm and most of the times you really do expect such things. On the other hand, any page has to do it, because it's tradition, and if we start to break tradition we could stop posting news as well. Additionally, if you as editor decide to put up something you have to not cross special borders: not making fun of a special individual, do not exaggerate. Well. That's why I hated that day back at Broodwar.de. Especially at broodwar.de. That has one good reason: bw.de pulled off the probably best prank ever in 2006, topping even the Blizzard show downs. We all know Pimpest Plays, and back in the old days, everyone was waiting for the next edition to come out. Furthermore, what was Pimpest Plays worth if there were no nice highlight movies about them? Now, another problem: Pimpest Plays were released way before their highlight clip was released, so you never knew when it came out. And that is what BW.de abused perfectly: when everyone was longing for that highlight thing they just released one - with a title that eventually forced their download area to its knees. It hit the community like a bomb, other pages started to quote their news and link to their fake-movie. And the movie itself isn't bad at all, neither in terms of content nor in terms of presentation. Definitely recommended if you don't know it already! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ND9dbsdJPc Door 13 + Show Spoiler +Mondragon vs. Reach Today's door is about one of my favourite games ever: Mondragon vs. Reach, second set from BlizzCon World Wide Invitational 2005. I was really excited when Blizzard announced this special event; there was a trailer of the now cancelled StarCraft:Ghost game and information coming up. But what was more important: a lot of really good foreigners and of course some Korean Pros were invited to play a special tournament. With the exception of WCG foreigneres and Koreans rarely really faced each other in a serious tournament or league, which caused the fans to theorycraft: are Koreans really THAT imbalanced or not? The majority agreed that only few of the top foreigners could compete with them, and would probably lose in a larger best-of series. Then again, Mondragon was in his prime: he recently won the European Cyber Games, something like WCG for Europeans, against Androide. The Zerg eventually replaced FiSheYe[pG], the second of WCG 2003 as German's best player. But what was most important: he ate any foreign Protoss and crushed him with ease. His PvZ was outstanding, there was no choke walled-in safe enough, even back then. The lurker-contain style, the flanks and the smart movement of his army abusing the advantages of his race were just ground breaking. If any foreigner would have had a chance to actually beat a Korean Pro it was for sure Mondi. Two of the invited players were Reach and Nal_rA - Mantoss and the Dreamer. I actually rooted for Kang Min, he was the coolest Protoss of the univerese. His style was unique and... well it was the Flowertoss. You seriously can't hate him, it's just not doable. So, all signs were set to have probably very good PvZs - besides the other good games of course. The initial question should be answered soon. It seemed that my hopes came true: Nal_rA had to play the German Zerg in the winner bracket. But oh my god, it was so disappointing. Mondragon got rushed so badly, a horrible, horrible rape. And yet it was an amazing game, as rA perfectly abused the ramps of the custom made map - a map that wasn't played every day in Korea or any other tournament. Even with Mondragon scouting this very, very ballsy Proxy Gates - no chance in hell for him. The very same happened to Testie, another of the really good foreigners, later on. The Dreamer butchered them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSrO4XkIiok Anyhow, it seemed very clear at this point that foreigners stood no chance against the Koreans, even the experienced ex-Pros such as Legionnaire and Assem. But there still was the LB games: and yet again Mondragon had to face a Korean Protoss - this time Reach. And suddenly he could show what he was capable of. This second set, even with the lousy commentary, shows BW at its best: nearly every possibly spell is used: disruption web, storms, reaver drops, ensnare, plague, swarm. A very intense back and forth game with marvellous control by both players. The third and final set isn't that bad either and also included in the VOD - you might want to check that out too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OICghpXHHrQ Door 14 + Show Spoiler +Icy Map Tournament Today we're proud to present the next edition of our Advent Calendar Tours - as usual in cooperation with the iCCup staff and Hacklebeast!Details: Server: iCCup - The Abyss Channel: X-mas Time: 18:00 GMT (+00:00) Maps: Bifrost - Tau Cross - Hitch Hiker - El Niño Stream: Hacklebeast + Status: offline Sign Up +++ Map DownloadThe map collection follows the idea that, in theory, it should be winter by now, with all that snowy awesomeness (if you don't need to drive a lot) that, again in theory, should provide a cozy Christmas atmosphere. So we're going to celebrate our beloved game on ice-tile-set maps, or at least on maps that have fitting names. BifrostI so loved Bifrost, because it's probably the cheesiest map there is. You basically have everything to generate very odd build orders, ranging from ordinary off-rax/gate/5-Pool all-ins to very deep SimCity rushes. The weird pathing with two ways into your main base make that possible. Fast Expansions aren't that easy to hold, so you might adapt your knowledge a little. It's no surprise that this map literally generated so many odd and yet thrilling plays waaaaay back, like the one I'm going to present between Elky and Boxer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLMB5i4PWf4 Tau CrossWell, there is not much to say about this map as it is still part in ICCup's map pack - and quite often used if the MOTWs feature only less known maps. Back in 2006 however, one quite entertaining PvT between Nada and Anytime went down on that map: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P83tOiGjLc Note: The map can be found in ICCup's standard mappack! Hitch HikerHitchhiker is the perfect combination of Tau Cross and Bifrost, which means it has an ice-tile set but is not an every-day map - a lot of strange pathings, neutral buildings and more ingridients to enable you to use different strategies. A lot of people hated on the map, but come on, watch that VOD between Flash and Stork, you can't help but want to play that map afterwards! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY7YMEdPip0 El NiñoI thought of using Gorky Island instead of El Nino but eventually let go. As much as I wanted to use this hideous island map - everyone would have started to curse at me. Instead we're going to use this one here, another „more recent“ map. The example VOD features a game between Jangbi and Barracks from Ever OSL 2009's Group Stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05fiag_KFQk Please not that the cast will start with a slight delay, as we're going to cast from replays again! The thread will be bumped once the stream goes online. Door 15 + Show Spoiler +Community Quiz Our beloved game grows older every day. We have quite a bit of history - there are not many titles out there that lasted for over 12 years. Now it's time for you to show what you can remember, how long you have been part. Space suits and very, very freaky hair cuts, quotes and memorable BM, show matches, leagues, tournaments and other events. Today's door features another Quiz. You can score up to 40 points with three different difficulties - and adjusted points, just like in Door 3. This time, the questions will be doable. Really easy! Yes, you can! Be cool and click that! The results will be posted in a few days; the form will remain open a bit longer. Door 16 + Show Spoiler +Race Wars! I'm not a big fan of competing with anonymous players on fancy ladders. Same goes for random games back on ordinary standard battle.net. It's like there is something missing. And I know a lot of people around here enjoy not needing to give their best, to be sure they're not Zerg-Lag-Ling-All-ined in most games (aka. peruvian Zerg). Besides, my intention was to actually get some people to try out SCBW. I want to revive last year's popular Race Wars tonight. Feel free to join the channel "X-Mas" at iCCup server around 17:00 GMT (+00:00) and join the party. For all that don't know "Race Wars": it's pretty easy. It's usually played on large maps, so at least six spawning positions are needed. BGH or Hunters are probably the best maps for this. Six or eight players join, all select random as races. In the game the races ally up and form even teams and then play either a 2v2v2 or a 3v3, depending on the race distribution. If you want, you can download an ice tile set BGH version to get the right Christmas feeling. Thanks to 2Pacalypse- for the DL Link! Since I had the idea that the Calendar should feature some sort of written or visual content for those who like to watch or don't have time to join, I'll just post this Trivia here: There actually was a bigger Race Wars that followed a different idea back in 2004. The German speaking fan page Broodwar.de wanted to determine which race was the strongest in Germany. For that they invited eight top players for each race to duke it out. The full grid and results can be found in the LP Article. That alone is a little, well, boring. It's nice as trivia, but not useful or hyping. Thanks to dyo we can watch the highlight moves of this small event. It's definitely worth a look! Used Meta Cafe to dodge German (Audio) censorship. Fuck you GEMA! Door 17 + Show Spoiler +Defiler Replays
Новости от Буржуев. Срочно! Важно!
Priwet cywkas, door of today is number 17 and tribute to defiler.ru. Page is huge, fun and you should visit now. It is for tournaments, streams and Russian community, but also awesome thing for foreigners - enter and play like czar, kill many bears - every sunday action and strim day!“What keeps you still interested in Broodwar?” - well beside its pure awesomeness, people like the Defiler.ru guys. Those lads from Russia are somewhat flying under the radar here on TL, even though they recently started to advertise their content a little more. I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't heard from them, or didn't notice how much work they made just to give us a few hours of fun each week - and almost every day. During the last year (!) the crew around the charming mafia boss FR)Yoda hosted weekly tours with a prize pool of $75. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8uMfwlN3J0 Moreover, they host LANs, provide a stream portal (including random Afreeca restreams), organize their Russian National Team and put up a Clan Tournament (the Nostalgia League, a one time event) with another $600. Every sunday yoda streamed for over five hours - on a very regular basis. So, if you missed many of the really sick matches during the Defiler tours, I prepared a small rep pack with just a few hand picked games. This pack features around 15 games, and the top of the foreign scene: Sziky, Michael, Bakuryu, Sneazel, Ramms and many more! So, watch out and follow Yoda, Lisyonok, Defi and all those lads when they're about to host another marvellous event! Door 18 + Show Spoiler +Movies! Today's door is some sort of shameless self-promotion - at least a little. I hope you can forgive me for that, as I wanted to include some sort of tribute for one of my long time online friends: Retuh and one of my favourite sub communites, the movie makers! Movie Making History in a Nutshell Dyo and Mert were probably the pioneers of this special genre; their works were quite popular back then, especially the Pimpest Plays Movie and the Boxer - God is in the TV movie. This first got a few people interested in the sub community. A lot of good and bad movies were released shortly after by different people. One of the most talented and oldschool editors was Konni who taught me a lot about Sony Vegas and other programmes. In 2007 the scene was more or less inactive, a lot of movie makers transferred into other gaming communities and so on. As is tradition, the complete SCBW scene was announced "dead" or at least "doing its final breath". Konni (aka. Retuh) and me thought that was a big pile of gobshite, excuse my French, and made plans to at least revive parts of the movie making scene. So we came up with the idea to host a fun contest with really easy rules. Retuh helped me a huge deal to do a short (amateur) write up for Sony Vegas, that would hopefully lure some people into our arms. We published that guide (an updated translation can be found in my blog) and started to advertise our contest with the generous help of broodwar.de.
Details: bw.de Movie Contest 2007 Rules- Three months time to make your movie
- No restrictions for lenghts or size of the movie
- Any software may be used, but the movie should be done without help of external persons
- Only replays from a fixed replay pool may be used
- Free choice of music and theme
- The movie with the most votes from the community wins (determined via Forum Poll at bw.de)
We didn't expect much participation right away, as the process of actually making a gaming movie is a lot of time. Nonetheless around 10 people showed interest. Sadly, a lot of those never got back or had to leave the contest due to RL issues. Eventually only Konni, SL.Code and me finished. I recommend that you watch the clips and celebrate its anniversary - it has been exactly four years!* Results - 2007
Movie Contest, 2nd Edition, 2008 The first movie contest gave me and Konni a few head aches - it was a shitload of work, especially for Retuh who had to upload these clips three or four times, provide mirrors and made the replay pool completely alone. Moreover only few people voted for the winner in the end; but the worst part of it all was that we were both quite negative about our work. But still, a lot of people commented in the final result news and gave a ton of positive feedback. Later in 2008 a few people contacted me and asked for a second edition of the movie contest. So we started over, the same rules applied with only minor changes. We agreed that some sort of jury was neccessary. I was really happy that the maestro himself, dyo, signed up to help us out. He was the first member of the jury. Furthermore ips.Zero, a Team Germany National Player, IsCream, the bw.de strategy head editor and NumbSchiller ,a former news head editor joined. Every of those judges could give 0 to 10 points for each movie - and so could the community in forum polls. The best score would have been 50 pts overall. This time a lot more people signed in, almost thirty people contacted me before the contest even started. A lot of them left - but we still had six clips this time. It should be noted that ra.Corsair aka. MooN published one of his first movies there (and was the most annoying person to get the contest started in the first place). I'm still very proud to have him lured into movie making, it really paid off. That kid was so fanatic that he released a movie almost every month, and his best work is quite popular even around here, on TL: Epic Moments of Starcraft
Results: 2008 1. Retuh - Just Starcraft | 46.5 Points 2. Gecko - World of Starcraft | 41.5 Points 3. MooN - Fascination Of Starcraft | 36 Points http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0snGW_o4gRk 4. Gatmja - No Mercy | 34 Points 5. Code - Insanity | 32 Points http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0_Zig-I3AA 6. Violix - Ten Years of Starcraft | 28.5 Points Note:* When I tried to re-upload the movies I couldn't help but hate even more on YouTube. Germany is pretty anal about IP issues, and thus doesn't allow me to host clips with certain audio tracks. It most times either censors the audio track or forces me to delete them again. Thus another provider, metacafe, was used. I'm sorry about the advertisment shit. If you're a maniac you can download the clips in HD from broodwar.de's fileserver. Many, many thanks to the page to support our community for so, so long!
Door 19 + Show Spoiler +Today's door is a generous gift from DaGGer, one of broodwar.de's old news editors. He recently posted an oldschool replay pack I want to share with you. Huge thanks to Dagger and broodwar.de! The replay pack features old games of none other than famous Nal_rA, the Dreamer himself. They range from version 1.09 to 1.11 - 130 replays sorted by match up and opponent. We all know Nal_rA, and I can't imagine how anyone could hate on him after his amazing Old Boy show. If you are into Nostalgia and/or want to learn more about this outstanding Protoss, the first one to win an MSL title - you should totally start to download the pack. How to: watch old replays + Show Spoiler [Manual] +Version 1 - Download all the .exe files - Download
- Extract into your game folder (C:\Starcraft\ for example)
- Open the version (e.g. Starcraft109.exe for 1.09 reps)
- Watch reps in Single Player
Version 2 Try to download one of the Patch Tools like Chickenlords Patcher. Warning: this MAY destroy BW for you, so be sure you could re-install it again! Teaser: Battle Report + Show Spoiler [Nal_rA vs. Boxer] +Introduction This is one of the six PvTs of Kang Min vs. Lim Yo Hwan. This replay features two of my most favourite players of all time: the Dreamer and the Emperor duking it out on some ancient ice tileset map - Silent Vortex. The statistics clearly favour Nal_rA: his best match up is PvT, additionally to his 68% win ratio against Boxer. This game however wasn't part of any official league or tournament. The four player map is hilariously big and can not really be compared to any recent map from today's Pro League. The main bases are located on some sort of high ground that are connected via ramp to a plateau - which again is connected via ramp to the wide open map that is covered entirely in ice; the only exceptions are two expansions on plateaus in the middle of this map. The natural expansion is in theory easy to defend as both ramps are quite close to each other. In reality this doesn't work out too well, as the distance between main minerals and natural minerals is quite large. The Protoss starts in upper left, the 11 o'clock position whereas Terran spawned at bottom right, the 7 o'clock. Both players start out completely usual, with the Protoss scouting early. He finds Boxer on the last possible spot just starting his factory. The Emperor uses his first Marines to chase of the Probe; the last thing the scouts was seeing was a second factory been constructed - but Boxer cancels it and rather goes for a safe sort of Siege Expand. Nal_rA adds a second Gate and prepares for some sort of Bulldog Timing Push. He uses two Zealots and a Goon to pressure the Terrans choke point, but only does little harm. Instead he loses all his forces while Boxer was able to get his expansion up a lot faster than Kang Min. The Dreamer does not intend to back off and go for a macro style - so he continues to pressure the Terran with three Zealots in a Shuttle and four Dragoons. He is able to break the first ramp and pushes the Expansion. While Boxer killed of the remaining units at his expansion the Protoss teched on and added an archive and a robotic bay. The Emperor wasn't sleeping either and added four more factories (one not in the screen) Nal_rA continues to harass again: his first three Dark Templars are dropped at the Natural, stopping the SCVs once again. Boxer scans and kills the DTs - but not fast enough as the next two are dropped only a few seconds later. This time it gets harder to detect the Ninjas, as his ComSats are nearly out of mana and all the turrets are gone. While the harass is still on Kang Min expands to the 1 o'clock expansion. But Boxer can keep up and sneaks out a few vultures Still no end to the harass: the Flowertoss drops another two DTs into the main this time - and two Dragoons. This gives Boxer a very hard time. Kang Min probably was too busy to kill of a fair amount of Boxer's units, because he seems to ignore that the vultures tear down his expansion. Eventually all Protoss units are killed with the help of a bunch of vultures. And still no way out! Nal_rA sneaks in two shuttles only seconds after the last Dragoons turned into blue soup. He splits up the shuttles and drops both Natural and Main economy. ... and the Nexus is still under fire ... ... which doesn't matter as the Dreamer already took the 5 o'clock main expansion... ... that is quite close to the Emperor's hidden Expansion at the Natural. This expansion is not scouted at all, as Nal_rA is busy to clean up the vultures at 1 o'clock. Meanwhile: Boxer uses a control group of vultures to lay down some mines in front of Nal_ra's main. Those mines scout the next big drop for him. Kang Min sees the vultures and tries to get rid of those annoying little fucks. Terran recognizes this and snipes all the High Templars in the army. Since Nal_rA needed to dodge a few vultures he scouts Boxer's hidden expo by accident. And kills it. Boxer's main base is nearly mined out - and his Natural a real fortress, the result of the heavy harass earlier. Terran needs to do something and pushes out. Where Kang_Min waits. GG! The Dreamer wins! Door 20 + Show Spoiler +Showmatch Rekrul Style Today's door features the results of the second Quiz and one really outstanding show match! Quiz: Answers + Show Spoiler +1 Point Questions Idra's famous BM. "Carriers - a useful talent toi [sic] to have". Who was the guy he said that to? Correct Answer: Draco WCG Question: who of the following players never entered the Top3 of the main event? * Correct Answer: Kolll Whose nickname is Storm Zerg? Correct Answer: Yellow Who was the first Protoss to win MSL? Correct Answer: Nal_rA An urban legend about the polish Zerg Blackman says... Correct Answer: trained vs. special CPU The French Terran Elky is nowadays... Correct Answer: Poker Player and millionaire The player remaining longest in KeSPA Rankings Top30 was... Correct Answer: Nada Xellos was especially known for his incredible... Correct Answer: Terran vs. Terran "This is many Tanks yes" - a quote by? Correct Answer: Boxer Which player has the most apperances in Pimpest Plays? Correct Answer: Boxer 2 Point Question Boxer's Dropship micro on Neo Jungle Story vs. Protoss is legendary. But who fell victim to those moves? Correct Answer: Nazgul & Smuft The finals of 2005s European Samsung Championship were played between... Correct Answer: Mondragon vs. Androide Epic Move: The famous Arbiter Recall of Nal_rA on Parallel Lines introduced a new era in Protoss vs. Terran. Who was his opponent? Correct Answer: GoodFriend Epic Move 2: JangBi stormed the shit out of NaDa's army on the map: Correct Answer: Othello The player with the longest MSL winning streak is? Correct Answer: JaeDong Who has the best record (best win/lose ratio) against JaeDong? Correct Answer: Kal (check out JaeDongThis is actually the very wrong answer, it has been a mix up by me. Apologies. Which WCG Map was infamous for its imbalanced starting positions? Correct Answer: Paranoid Android Who is "Papa Bear"? Correct Answer: ForU Which player got flamed and called a liar when he posted he acchieved B- in the first season he played BW on Teamliquid? Correct Answer: Kolll 3 Point Questions Elky once destroyed his own Command Center by accident. To which unit's fire did the CC die slowly? Correct Answer: a Vulture In which team was Xellos[yG] when he won WCG 2004? Correct Answer: G.O. (Greatest Ones) But what about the most expansive game? Read on and find out... TL.net has a lot of outstanding posters and players. You might like them or not, but be honest, those make the community what it is. One of those posters/players is Rekrul, I guess we all know him. Due to his history as ex-ProGamer, a very skilled one by the way, he still has and ever had quite good connections to the finest players both in Korea and the foreign world. Additionally, he knows a few Poker Players I guess. Apparently it was some sort of tradition for him to bash good players in matches for money - privately played behind closed doors. However one was different: the American played some guy called Zephir aka. Liquid`Steve on Lost Temple. Well, ok They played for money. Still nothing special. Of course the wealthy "Pokerstar" couldn't keep up with the ex ProGamer's mechanics or skill, not by any chance - so the conditions had to be altered a bit to make it actually somewhat interesting. Rekrul suggested to only use Scouts, Probes and Cannons in a Protoss vs. Terran - a severe handicap, reminding me at some Battle.net/TL.net Attacks. It seems as if Steve was ok with this, and confident enough to agree to 400:1 odds with 40$ coming from Rekrul. The recipe for the most expensive match is done! If Rekrul lost, he only had to pay 40$, if he won however... 12.000$ is quite a large sum for us mortals. I highly (!) recommend the replay (which is still watchable!) and the original blog of Rekrul. Both are full of lulz, bragging and will give you a glimpse of what makes TL.net so special. Door 21 + Show Spoiler +FFA Tournament Today's door is going to feature another tournament. This time we are not going to use ice maps, no weird pathing on semi island maps. No, we're going to spice things up, 1on1 is so yesterday! Time: 17:00 GMT (+00:00) Channel: x-mas @ ICCup Map: Blood Bath Stream: none yet | Status: offline
Yes, that is correct: the only map that is played is Blood Bath. And there is more: the mode will be FFA - free for all, everyone against everyone! For those of you who don't know: you will get put into groups, the last man standing advances to the next stage. It's absolutely essential for this tournament to have as much participants as possible. Make sure to join! But why on earth would you pick Blood Bath? Well it is simple: even rookies should be able to have a little fun, and this map is probably one of the weirdest, and yet funniest "fun" maps out there. Moreover it has been part of SCBW since ever, as it is part of the original map pool that comes with your CD / download. There are fanatics out there that wrote long, long essays and in-depth analysis of possible strategies on this very, very small maps. I suggest you take a look why this map in particular is so popular! As this mode may confuse you, this is how it will go down: - You sign-up at the ICCup tournament page and check in 30 minutes before the tournament starts
- I will generate a grid to determine which players are put in what group
- four (or three players, depending on how many people sign up) players will be put into one group
- you play on Blood Bath and try to win - the last man standing will advance
- the advancing players will duke it out in another group
The usual thanks go to: iCCup.Fry and the iCCup staff! Door 22 + Show Spoiler +Misc Door XXII: Miscellaneous It's a nightmare to pick the correct content, and some features, such as Door II really worried me. I really did enjoy the RWA, but some of the older community members went apeshit on it whenever I posted the link in forums. It may seem as if the Calendar was organized professionally, which is not true at all. Without my little helpers the project would have been a fail. A lot of people suggested smaller things that couldn't be a single door, since they were too small or already way too known. This door is dedicated to all of you who gave feedback and sent in stuff, this door features "this and that". 1. Beta Videos SC9.de is one of the most amazing things created by the German community. It's (more like "was" hosted) hosted by NlN - a mysterious oldschool player. He became a real legend by simply idling in "Broodwar Deu-1" @ EU Battle.net Server for ages. He actually had a relatively high skill, judging from the replays he uploaded of himself way back - but that's not the source of fame. The players that randomly messaged him started to devote him. Literally. When I ran out of ideas for the Calendar Celetuiw aka. AoP)Cele( suggested to browse this page again, because it is a box full of neat little treasures - alone the Bugs section is hilariously huge and gives you enough to read for days. What I found were some Broodwar Beta Videos - only short clips, the ingame presentation was taken from a gaming magazine CD of pre-2000 I assume. Therefore it is only little content, not really enough to fill a page. Addtionally: I have no clue about BW Beta at all, which is why I don't know what's fake and what's the real deal. I still re-uploaded them to YouTube, so you can watch them. The download area of NlN's page also features a Render-Video, 3 minutes in length, inlcuding a very professional logo at the end. It's a .exe file, and for some reason Windows 7 doesn't allow me to capture it as video file. Still worth a look! (Don't worry it's malware free) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MfsTHLjJoc&list=PLF83ED4C90A577B40&feature=plpp_play_all 2. Magic Cards The reason why following door wasn't included is that I have no idea what Magic Cards are. I only played Yu-Gi-Oh! in my highschool years (I love you Hiya!), most times during the super interesting subjects of music, art class and religion. Still, those cards are super nostalgic and quite funny, even if you don't know shit about the game/featured players. There are two different editions, one done by PsychoBaBas, posted on Gosugamers.net and one done by Trozz on TL.net. Both also feature quite known community members. Sit back and enjoy! 3. Fantasy Sponsors I'm a huge Snooker fan. Don't worry if you don't know this 'sport' - it's basically ordinary pool billard in very hard (not saying pool would be easy). The thing with snooker is that it sometimes has very weird sponsors behind it. Poker and snooker, ok that may be, but noodles and snooker ? Energy Drinks and snooker? No idea, I don't see a correlation there. I actually once drank too much coffee before playing snooker and was all over the place cause I was so... shaking. Nevermind. This gave me the idea to do an article about sponsors that should have entered the Korean e-Sport scene. Sadly, I'm not that funny, and it soon turned out to be a dead end. Here are some of my “notes”: Maybe open with? 'translate.google.com is proud to announce that the management has far even been decided to sponsor more like Pro Leauge 2012! Occupy the machine help understand worldwide community of youth! Yours sincerly, the linguistic Pros!'Potential Movie: KesPPPA The only useful idea however came from Pholon - who didn't realize what he did. I just post the pics in spoilers, as a picture says more than 1000 words (attention: slightly NSFW and possibly highly disturbing; what is seen can not be unseen): 4. Oxel's SC2 Fantasies When I was part of broodwar.de's staff back in 2008 a guy called Oxel showed up and entered the discussions about the announced SCII. He was a really weird person. All the moderators over at bw.de really did their best to remain fair, to save the user from trolls, spam and so on - and most importantly grab rookies by the hand and explain carefully to them what better is not-posted. But sometimes you can't stop laughing yourself, or facepalming for this matter. There are just some requirements if you want to have a sane and rational discussion. Read for yourself what Oxel thought was very neccessary for a good SCII Single Player campaign. His OP I recently had an interesting idea. In SC1's campaign a lot of opportunities were missed to use Sarah's/Kerrigan's "features", both her unit portrait as ghost as well as Kerri as Zerg [e/n: Kerrigan] are certainly not everybodies taste. Addtionally BW addedd a signficant amount of female units. You should keep in mind that BW had only an age restriction for under 12 year olds - and you can show a lot when the title is rated that way.
Besides that there were no erotic features in SC1. Of course, it is a strategy game, but it also has a story, and especially part two should highlight this feature. Even in-game are enough possibilities, as you can see when Rayoner and Sarah meet for the first time.
I would be interested what you think of this. How would you add this new element without making it artificial and constructed? Please do not do premature postings, I don't want hardcore orgies. Erotic is something different! OP by Oxel
Samir Duran - Oxel Style 5. Coop Campaign ICCup.Fry linked me to a coop-campaign over at broodwar.de. We wanted to include this in the Speed-run door (which also got posted before a week ago), but sadly, all those missions were in German. So it basically was useless for most readers here. I thought it would have been a good idea to post them here, as they might be a nice thing for people that want to try out SCBW for the first time. You could play it with other rookies and wouldn't get too bored while learning about BW's story. But: time was running short, and even with Fry investing a lot of time we couldn't translate / edit the campaign with the international files (MPQs thy are a heartless bitch) in time. Only one of those missions are done by now. I recommend you DL it anyway, even if you're a better player, this isn't "so" easy and quite a challenge! DownloadIf you don't care at all, you can DL the „original“ German campaign at broodwar.de: 6. Infested Terrans With the release of Patch 1.13 the Infested Terrans were thrown out of the game by accident. This was kinda funny, as many people in the community started to rage quite hard. Well 'rage', it was more or less not that serious. However, Phantom[xz] wrote some funny news/comment over at gosugamers that showed how most people felt back then. Definitely worth reading. Not added because it's still quite small, too small for its own door. Also, a bonus VOD: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaGtjWL5mZo&feature=player_embedded Door 23 + Show Spoiler +? An Advent Calendar is used to build up expectations - the joy you have before the final day. In Germany many families exchange gifts already on the 24th, unlike other countries. I am German, so I will stick with our custom. Since there is (almost) no content left, you'll be able to guess tomorrow's final gift. It is some sort of riddle: throughout the day Pholon and me are going to give you little hints of what it might be. It's going to be big, bigger than any other door. I hope you enjoy it! Hint #1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sWjGBUwTlM This video had an additional link to ICCup's mainpage. The idea was to have people recognize ICCup as main host. Hint #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU5CXi146bo This video has a) one of Sayle's very old overlays (the banana), b) grapes (Sayle's favourite food) and c) a photo shop montage of grapes hitting Mainfesto7 in the face. This should have been enough to figure that the mysterious event was casted by Sayle & Mani. Hint #3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbsQjDdgvbI This clip features a famous play of G5 against Idra on Destination. Idra lost against carriers, which we all know aren't his favourite units. If you saw that replay you knew that it had to feature G5. Given that the first clip ONLY featured Toss scenes you could rule out idra. In the end ICCup + Sayle&Manifesto + G5 should have been enough to figure out ICCup Attack feat. G5.
Since I'm maybe going to plan more “things” like the calendar, I'd really appriciate your opinion. While you hopefully bite your nails and press F5 you could also take a few minutes to fill out the evaluation!
This project wasn't done by me alone. These persons deserve special thanks: - Pholon for his “””feedback””” and his support
- Quint for translation, beta testing, feedback and organizational help
- ICCup.Fry for hosting tournaments and making maps
In no particular order: the ICCup Staff for helping me out with their platform, NoMaK- for BETA-Testing, Chef for filling gaps (<3 IdoGayStrats), Bakuryu (Door 6!), Esc4ton (File host), DaGGer and everybody who gave me feedback. Door 24 + Show Spoiler +ICCup Attack feat. G5 It's about time: you are now free to open the final door. With the help of a lot of people I am very proud to announce a very nice event - ladies & gentleman - ICCup Attack! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3f4QrSr2QnA Dan "Numbers Guy" delivers! Already hyped? No? I recommend you read the official announcement in the BW Tournament forum, written by Pholon.
Again, there is a huge list of people I need to thank: Pholon, Quint, iCCup.Fry, Esc4ton, G5, Sayle, Manifesto, Kiante, Intrigue, Smix, Dan, YelloAnt, Flawless and all the others that send in and helped with smaller and yet quite important things. I wish you all a merry christmas and a happy holiday!
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