OpenBW aims at bringing the greatest game of all time to a new generation of gamers and developers, at a higher level than ever seen before. While OpenBW contains a new game engine, it is fully compatible with Brood War by Blizzard.
OpenBW is developed entirely by us. We own the copyrights of our work and we do not violate copyrights of other parties. In particular, OpenBW does not contain any IP (intellectual property) owned by Blizzard.
Although the entire project is a volunteering effort by unpaid contributors the team and project setup matches professional equivalents and we set high standards of quality. In our view, this is the key to our success and acceptance by you.
Hi. I’m the developer of the game engine for OpenBW. I’ve been writing a bot/AI for StarCraft: Brood War for a while now, and I started the OpenBW project because working with the original game for purposes of machine learning or running automated games is quite difficult. The existing solutions scale poorly and are not portable. I also really wanted to watch replays in the browser, so I figured I would recreate the game engine. OpenBW is still in the early stages, and the scope has grown a little, but my main responsibility is the core game engine, and the most important goal is full compatibility with StarCraft: Brood War.
The game engine is almost the entire game. It is how units move, prod and poke each other, how they bug out and struggle with pathfinding, how they live and how they die. It is not things like the user interface, graphics or sound, but don’t worry, we’ll have that too. At some point you’ll be able to play it, there will be networking and whatnot. But not yet.
The first focus of the project is to be able to view replays. Replays are a nice focus since in order to play a replay, the entire game engine is required. From the perspective of the code, viewing a replay is almost the same thing as actually playing the game, the difference is just that the user input comes from a file instead of from a mouse and keyboard. The required accuracy and faithfulness to the original game can not be overstated. The engine is large, and if anything is off by the slightest margin, the entire game will go out of sync. By out of sync I simply mean that something different would happen if you were to play a game in OpenBW vs the original StarCraft. There is a butterfly effect that happens when something is done incorrectly which creates enormous differences. Therefore, the original behavior needs to be replicated exactly.
The engine will be a library which can be used in other projects. There is no API yet, it is too early to be used for that purpose. There are no ETAs (at least not from me). Features will be done when they’re done.
We have a demo replay viewer that you can use to view a replay in the browser. In order to draw the graphics it requires some files from StarCraft: Brood War, so you must have that installed locally (with the 1.16.1 patch).
Please read the instructions on how to use the replay viewer here. The replay viewer itself can be found here.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS
BW AI IDE
Introducing the Broodwar Artificial Intelligence Integrated Development Environment (BW AI IDE) as a separate module.
quuad is taking over the lead for the BW HD module. We are very excited to have quuad in charge of BW HD. Not only is he immensely talented, but he also brought his own supply: + Show Spoiler +
Social Media
We're now present on Twitter, Youtube, Reddit. Of course you can always visit our forum to discuss anything related to OpenBW.
Tuesday, Mar 21 12:33am GMT (GMT+00:00) Added graphs. Tuesday, Jan 24 3:45am GMT (GMT+00:00) The replay viewer now supports sound. Tuesday, Jan 10 1:03am GMT (GMT+00:00) Added support for Protoss Tuesday, Jan 03 5:11am GMT (GMT+00:00) Added upgrades tab and research tab Saturday, Dec 31 5:31am GMT (GMT+00:00) Added unit selection and health bars Wednesday, Dec 21 11:41pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Added support for Zerg race Tuesday, Dec 20 1:55am GMT (GMT+00:00) Added army composition tab Saturday, Dec 17 7:21pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Added draggable production tab Tuesday, Dec 13 5:17pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Added support for the SSCAIT tournament: http://www.openbw.com/sscait-listings/ Browse recent replays and watch them seamlessly in your browser. Also: no need to specify the MPQ file locations more than once anymore. They are now cached.
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REPORTING BUGS
We would really appreciate your time and effort in letting us know of any problems you may experience with OpenBW. By letting us know you can help us improve the project! Please follow the process outlined below when reporting bugs.
There are basically three types of issues: 1. You cannot watch a replay (e.g. "fatal error: decompression failed" or similar) 2. You can watch replays, but the replay is buggy / out of sync 3. There is an issue with the GUI (e.g. elements not displaying correctly)
For issues of type 1, include your patch_rt.mpq file and indicate how you obtained your copy of Brood War (CD, download from Blizzard, other...)
For issues of type 2, include the replay and indicate at what time in the replay you noticed the issue.
For issues of type 3, include a screen shot and indicate your browser version and operating system.
Please send your bug report to dev5(a t)openbw.com Alternatively, you can also drop a post on our official OpenBW Forum here
Because if they won't do it, we will do it ourselves.
3D MODEL SHOWCASE
(Unit models by xiaorobear and quuad)
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CONTRIBUTING
If you are a 3D artist and want to collaborate, please contact us at dev5(a t)openbw.com!
Our development environment for 3D artists is ready. As a contributing artist, you can upload your finished unit sprites to our staging environment and directly see your unit in-game. Just watch a replay and toggle 'q' to switch between original graphics and your new unit.
A first draft of the style guide and tutorials are available to get you started.
Intended to facilitate the setup for aspiring bot developers, the BW AI IDE module (Broodwar Artificial Intelligence Integrated Development Environment module) aims to provide an integrated development environment consisting of all required tools to kick-start development. Ready to be used out of the box!
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OPEN BWAPI
BWAPI is the de-facto standard to interact with BW as a developer. It runs on Windows only and provides an interface to the original Broodwar game. OpenBWAPI provides the exact same interface, but connects to the OpenBW game engine as its backend. The source of BWAPI, OpenBW, and OpenBWAPI are all open and they compile on Linux. This means you can develop and run Broodwar bots on Linux.
Currently in the process of development is the Java API called BWAPI4J It will run on both Windows and Linux out of the box and provides a step towards a type-safe API. It is the ideal entry point for developers with Java experience.
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CONTRIBUTING TO THE IDE
All the code is open-source and available in the repositories linked above. If you want to contribute you can either fork the repository or create pull requests. To avoid redundant work we would appreciate if you talked to us about your ideas.
Note that the documentation is very rudimentary at the moment. We can walk you through the steps of setting everything up via chat on IRC freenode #openbw or #bwapi until the documentation is finished.
You have ideas how to further improve OpenBW? Found something that does not work as it should? Let us know here on TL or in our feedback forum:
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HOW CAN I REPORT AN ISSUE?
Please refer to our bug report section of the replay viewer module here
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HOW CAN I HELP?
Developers All of our code is published at https://github.com/OpenBW. You can either fork the repositories or commit pull requests. We would appreciate if you get in touch with us and tell us about your idea to prevent redundant work.
Artists Design guidelines and license agreement are still a work in progress, but please do contact us!
Other There is plenty of other work to do. Recording of sound effects, map tilesets in HD, thorough testing, etc. Let us know if you have something you would like to contribute.
Monday, Jun 19 6:54pm GMT (GMT+00:00) Introduced BW AI IDE module. Published OpenBW and OpenBWAPI repositories. Tuesday, Mar 21 12:33am GMT (GMT+00:00): Added graphs. Wednesday, Feb 08 5:12am GMT (GMT+00:00): Staging area is ready to be used by contributing artists. Tuesday, Jan 24 3:45am GMT (GMT+00:00): The replay viewer now supports sound. Tuesday, Jan 10 1:03am GMT (GMT+00:00): added support for Protoss race and announcement section Tuesday, Jan 03 4:33pm GMT (GMT+00:00): layout redesign by l3rand0n, added vision statement Tuesday, Jan 03 5:11am GMT (GMT+00:00): added upgrades tab and research tab Monday, Jan 02 5:09pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added general section with info on feedback and collaboration Saturday, Dec 31 5:31am GMT (GMT+00:00): added unit selection and health bars Wednesday, Dec 21 11:41pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added support for Zerg race Tuesday, Dec 20 1:55am GMT (GMT+00:00): added army composition tab, un-spoilered replay viewer screenshots Saturday, Dec 17 7:21pm GMT (GMT+00:00): updated replay viewer section Thursday, Dec 15 3:58pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added replay feature overview, OpenBW HD section, ToC, formatting Wednesday, Dec 14 4:52pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added header image Tuesday, Dec 13 10:17pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added the updates section Monday, Dec 12 3:43pm GMT (GMT+00:00): added how-to and bug report sections
Some other stuff that needs to be added that I don't see in the "Don't report" but I don't consider bugs:
- Moving with your mouse. - Fog of war and vision toggle
Otherwise, simply WOW!
thanks for pointing those out. I added fog of war and vision toggle as missing.
However, you _can_ right-click drag to move the map with your mouse. Also: you can drop a new replay into the replay viewer at any time.
I also think that there is no way that those APMs are correct. Is it somehow related to speed of the playback? Even if it was purely EAPM (which is a subjective metric depending on who is measuring, I'll admit), it seems awfully low.
EDIT - Color switching? Would be nice if eventually you could select one player to be yellow and the other red, as you can sometimes do depending on the .rep file and your player position when watching the replay.
One more comment: The color of neutral units on the minimap is slightly off, isn't it? I feel like it is especially hard to distinguish minerals from Blue/Teal units in the screenshot I posted above (which is .png so it should be decent quality with low artifact count). Also, are there really no Kakaru on FS? I thought there were; in which case, shouldn't they turn up yellow on the minimap iirc (or maybe that's just when I do shift+tab+tab in game >_> )
Yeah, the minerals should be lighter. The player colors are also incorrect (they're valid colors but the wrong ones are selected). Water isn't animated either. Personally I thought the APM seemed too high instead of too low (not in that screenshot though). There doesn't seem to be a well-established way to calculate APM, so I'm just counting every single action in the replay, averaged over 10 seconds (in terms of fastest game speed).
There will certainly be features like zooming, changing player color and hopefully some HD graphics in the future. Need to get the other races working first though
Watched a replay of Dahyun[WHITE] vs. b..`peace that I just grabbed from bwreplays.com and I'm amazed at how well it copes. It does desync but after at least 10 minutes of flawless high res play.
On December 09 2016 20:42 Dapper_Cad wrote: Amazing work.
Watched a replay of Dahyun[WHITE] vs. b..`peace that I just grabbed from bwreplays.com and I'm amazed at how well it copes. It does desync but after at least 10 minutes of flawless high res play.
Very impressive work! Not to be a downer but won't Bliz come knocking you down? (Although they've let BW run a lot of community projects as long as they're not for profit).
On December 09 2016 22:32 DarkNetHunter wrote: Not to be a downer but won't Bliz come knocking you down?
There is not much attack surface really. We do not distribute any copyright protected material from the website. And if you want to use OpenBW together with material owned by Blizzard (such as the original graphics) you are required to own a legal copy of Brood War.
On December 10 2016 02:15 [7x]dizzy wrote: I'm curious how you were able to "play" bw replay? Is there open source for broodwar or you were debugging broodwar.exe?
OpenBW is free and open-source. There is no broodwar.exe involved.
The required accuracy and faithfulness to the original game can not be overstated. The engine is large, and if anything is off by the slightest margin, the entire game will go out of sync. By out of sync I simply mean that something different would happen if you were to play a game in OpenBW vs the original StarCraft. There is a butterfly effect that happens when something is done incorrectly which creates enormous differences. Therefore, the original behavior needs to be replicated exactly.
It's really good that you realize this. Even the actual BW struggles with it sometimes - I kid you not but I had a replay that when replayed in BW, one thing went slightly differently than in the actual game, the result being that the wrong player won!
Hey, I don't know if this is possible with what you are developping, but what i would really really like would be a tool whichis able to access a bigger amount of replays, and lets me set filters á la: Map: FS; Time:5.00 / Earliest; Units: Most dragoons / 1 DT. If you know what I mean. There are buildorder-tools which theoretically allow to find fastest build order to, but having actual examples would be so good. I also imagine this tool as super usefull for bots, since the bot could just mimic whatever he finds (including the building placement and scouting)
well done tscmoo and imp42! looks beautiful. having the ability rewind is very important you know when you lose some actions and then had to rewatch the replay again. so annoying.
interesting how you chose terran replays first. It seems zerg replays are most susceptable to the out of sync issue.
On December 10 2016 04:47 molotow[eef] wrote: Hey, I don't know if this is possible with what you are developping, but what i would really really like would be a tool whichis able to access a bigger amount of replays, and lets me set filters á la: Map: FS; Time:5.00 / Earliest; Units: Most dragoons / 1 DT. If you know what I mean. There are buildorder-tools which theoretically allow to find fastest build order to, but having actual examples would be so good. I also imagine this tool as super usefull for bots, since the bot could just mimic whatever he finds (including the building placement and scouting)
On December 10 2016 10:12 PrincessLeila wrote: Mother of god. I thought reverse engineering BW was practically impossible. WTF.
Possible, but interesting how Blizzard will react to it. So that it doesn't fall similarly to StarCraft in a browser project.
The two projects really cannot be compared. In fact, "StarCraft in a browser" seems to be the exact opposite of OpenBW.
"StarCraft in a browser": - uses copyright-protected images and sounds - implements a very rudimentary engine that allows units to move and attack - attempts to create the illusion of real Brood War by letting the user move units on an image that looks like a map
You can quickly verify this here: http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ (an alternative site that still is online) You will not see any terrain and you can just run units through e.g. minerals. the supposedly "clean" repository without infringed material can be found here: https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
On December 11 2016 02:13 TurboDreams wrote: I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this. I would love to see this and Shield Battery integrated together as both will be open sourced.
On December 11 2016 02:13 TurboDreams wrote: I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this. I would love to see this and Shield Battery integrated together as both will be open sourced.
Unfortunately all my attempts to reach out to SB have been rather unsuccessful so far. To this point a "good luck with that" was the best I could get :p
I will take this as an opportunity to try again. If anybody involved with SB would like to discuss possibilities, here we are
On December 11 2016 02:13 TurboDreams wrote: I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this. I would love to see this and Shield Battery integrated together as both will be open sourced.
Unfortunately all my attempts to reach out to SB have been rather unsuccessful so far. To this point a "good luck with that" was the best I could get :p
I will take this as an opportunity to try again. If anybody involved with SB would like to discuss possibilities, here we are
You should probably PM tec27, he is the developer of SB.
On December 11 2016 02:13 TurboDreams wrote: I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this. I would love to see this and Shield Battery integrated together as both will be open sourced.
Unfortunately all my attempts to reach out to SB have been rather unsuccessful so far. To this point a "good luck with that" was the best I could get :p
I will take this as an opportunity to try again. If anybody involved with SB would like to discuss possibilities, here we are
You should probably PM tec27, he is the developer of SB.
Yes, I could do that. But chances are I will get the same result as the previous three times. Maybe we should just let it be for a while. The point was made, we tried to reach out. Now let's just see how things develop.
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
If this doesn't happen, then you didn't create the engine properly.
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
If this doesn't happen, then you didn't create the engine properly.
[image]
Do you happen to have the replay available or could you attempt to get it for us? It will take a while to support PvZ, but it definitely would be nice to have this as a test case!
How exactly are you going about recreating BW's wonky pathfinding? Could you write some sort of guide or documentation as to how it actually works? Would it maybe be possible to get some kind of pathing predictor that prints out certain paths (say a worker's mining path or a scout workers closest path from main to main) as lines or something like that?
There was iirc a casted foreigner match where exactly the same thing happened on the same position on FS. That replay might be easier to obtain. I think it was pvt and the terran said something and did not even kill the units
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
If this doesn't happen, then you didn't create the engine properly.
On December 11 2016 07:12 Freakling wrote: How exactly are you going about recreating BW's wonky pathfinding? Could you write some sort of guide or documentation as to how it actually works? Would it maybe be possible to get some kind of pathing predictor that prints out certain paths (say a worker's mining path or a scout workers closest path from main to main) as lines or something like that?
There will probably be some documentation on this eventually, and yeah it would be interesting to visualize it.
About the units stuck on the ramp and that noclipping dragoon, they should happen. If they don't, it's a bug. Ehh, maybe it's a bug either way. Would be nice to have the correct bugs though
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
If this doesn't happen, then you didn't create the engine properly.
On December 10 2016 10:45 AleXoundOS wrote: supporting this
On December 10 2016 10:12 PrincessLeila wrote: Mother of god. I thought reverse engineering BW was practically impossible. WTF.
Possible, but interesting how Blizzard will react to it. So that it doesn't fall similarly to StarCraft in a browser project.
The two projects really cannot be compared. In fact, "StarCraft in a browser" seems to be the exact opposite of OpenBW.
"StarCraft in a browser": - uses copyright-protected images and sounds - implements a very rudimentary engine that allows units to move and attack - attempts to create the illusion of real Brood War by letting the user move units on an image that looks like a map
You can quickly verify this here: http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ (an alternative site that still is online) You will not see any terrain and you can just run units through e.g. minerals. the supposedly "clean" repository without infringed material can be found here: https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js
OpenBW: - does not use any copyright-protected material at all - provides a full-fledged engine implementing the game rules down to the last detail - represents a real alternative to the original engine, and is written from scratch
The Stratagus engine has (some) support for Starcraft with Stargus as well as Warcraft with Wargus and has had it for a very long time. The only thing that Blizzard has gone after them for was the original name of the project: FreeCraft. I'd think they'd probably be more accepting of the name "OpenBW" even though I don't really agree with FreeCraft having had any chance of being confused with Blizzard trademarks either... (especially now that we even have Minecraft)
This is a great project, seems like Doom's Prboom but without the convenience of having the actual source of the game that you want to faithfully reproduce. Far too often these open source reimplementations just have no concern for staying faithful to the original. BW is the one game that requires it the most.
On December 11 2016 22:27 nighcol wrote: [...] Far too often these open source reimplementations just have no concern for staying faithful to the original. BW is the one game that requires it the most.
Luckily, in this case faithful reproduction is not a nice-to-have but an absolute necessity due to how replays are stored and replayed (the game is played out, just reading actions from the replay file instead of the player input).
This makes the retention test rather easy: process a set of replays and check if the outcome is exactly the same.
An error occured. This is probably due to an unimplemented feature. Only 1v1 TvT replays currently work.
fatal error: decompress: out of bounds
when i load in stardat.mpq, broodat.mpq, and patch_rt.mpq in, with or without a replay loaded.
You have the 1.16.1 patch of course? Did you install Brood War from CD, download it from Blizzard, or obtain it from somewhere else?
MPQ files are stored in the Mo'PaQ format, which allows for several compression algorithms (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPQ#Compression). Seems like something went wrong during decompression of one of the MPQ files, which could indicate a non-standard compression.
why dont you guys cooporate with SB, they can run the repay correctly, and i think there are some guys in deviantart.com will be instered do some model for BW HD o.o.gl!
How about optional pixel art scaling algorithms? I'm not a huge fan of them but I could see myself preferring those over redone versions that don't really match the originals.
On December 15 2016 06:59 nighcol wrote: How about optional pixel art scaling algorithms? I'm not a huge fan of them but I could see myself preferring those over redone versions that don't really match the originals.
That is a possibility that we certainly should explore for the tilesets.
As for the units, if you look at the comparison image, how could you not want the new version? :D
The potential graphical issue with scaling up original units is that they get a cartoon-style look, almost in a Carbot style. The potential legal issue is that we would not be allowed to distribute up-scaled graphics that are directly based on copyright-protected material.
On December 18 2016 09:09 Biolunar wrote: Is there source code available?
The short answer: yes, in your browser (since it is JavaScript).
The somewhat longer answer: tscmoos engine resides in test.js and is not really human-readable, since it is generated from c++.
The info bar and production tab are just HTML/JavaScript on top of the engine. Their code resides in start.js and info-bar.js and is human-readable.
Tscmoo's c++ code, which is what you really want, is currently online, but not in a publishable state. You won't be able to run it or make much sense of it yet.
watched a zvt replay,the creep is a bit funny :D,also the production tab is really big or there is a way to change it ? the only i miss is clicking units to watch the health,but is really cool to watch replays with this app
On December 20 2016 10:24 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: watched a zvt replay,the creep is a bit funny :D,also the production tab is really big or there is a way to change it ? the only i miss is clicking units to watch the health,but is really cool to watch replays with this app
zerg is not officially supported yet. So far, only tvt works. Clicking units, sound etc. will be added as well.
the production tab is designed for a HD screen. It looks probably huge on a lesser resolution. Didn't really think about that...:/
yes much better,is a bit strange but in the picture looks better than i see it while using,looks ok actually,maybe im not used to it http://imgur.com/a/PmRur
On December 21 2016 02:41 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: yes much better,is a bit strange but in the picture looks better than i see it while using,looks ok actually,maybe im not used to it http://imgur.com/a/PmRur
btw it is windows 7 not windows 98
GameHeart gave me some tips (thanks!!) and advised to differ between "tournament spectating mode" and "replay analysis mode".
GameHeart: For spectating tournaments I focus on keeping the game space unimpeded and making sure the numbers and information are big and chunky so they can still be legible on low quality streams, on your phone, or sitting in the back of a stadium at a live event. That is unnecessary if the interface is designed for just watching replays at home.
In the replay viewer we follow the "tournament spectating mode". That is, big and chunky numbers, simple shapes, bright numbers on dark background, etc.
For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
On December 21 2016 03:58 thezanursic wrote: For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
Sounds like you want to double the size of the original sprites and put some filter on them, which you could just use some upscale algorithm for.
They're going in the right direction, remodelling the asset while keeping the vanilla silhouette intact. If they feel the need to add detail, they could use official renders and concept art for inspiration.
On December 21 2016 03:58 thezanursic wrote: For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
Upscaling is possible, but it usually looks ugly It will just add pixels in between the current ones, estimating the color of that new pixel to be a mixture of the pixels surrounding it (roughly said) and thus leading to a blurry image with no real sharp edges. The bigger problem of this approach would be copyright infringement. The current art is copyrighted by Blizzard, and taking this art and upscaling it does not remove the copyright of the upscaled version. To obtain a really free and open source Starcraft Broodwar, we need recreated assets, which get released under a free culture license. (I'd suggest CC-BY-SA license for all assets) In the end, I agree with you having "most possible similar looks" to the original. Since thats the looks what we are used to since 1998. BossPurple explains it quite well though in his post. There might be a lot of details in the original Blizzard 3D models but you can't see them now because they rendered it to this tiny images. Referring to original concept art, cinematics or what else is out there is the best way to go.
On December 21 2016 03:58 thezanursic wrote: For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
Sounds like you want to double the size of the original sprites and put some filter on them, which you could just use some upscale algorithm for.
They're going in the right direction, remodelling the asset while keeping the vanilla silhouette intact. If they feel the need to add detail, they could use official renders and concept art for inspiration.
Totally agree! Do you have a good resource of such art?
On December 21 2016 03:58 thezanursic wrote: For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
Upscaling is possible, but it usually looks ugly It will just add pixels in between the current ones, estimating the color of that new pixel to be a mixture of the pixels surrounding it (roughly said) and thus leading to a blurry image with no real sharp edges. The bigger problem of this approach would be copyright infringement. The current art is copyrighted by Blizzard, and taking this art and upscaling it does not remove the copyright of the upscaled version. To obtain a really free and open source Starcraft Broodwar, we need recreated assets, which get released under a free culture license. (I'd suggest CC-BY-SA license for all assets) In the end, I agree with you having "most possible similar looks" to the original. Since thats the looks what we are used to since 1998. BossPurple explains it quite well though in his post. There might be a lot of details in the original Blizzard 3D models but you can't see them now because they rendered it to this tiny images. Referring to original concept art, cinematics or what else is out there is the best way to go.
That's why I suggested pixel art scaling algorithms as popularised by emulators. Those don't result in a blurry look but of course typically give pretty cartoony results. Matter of taste but I think the original pixel art of BW doesn't totally go against that look.
The emus obviously use them real-time as well because they're not tailored for each title they support, I guess that might not be so easy if this is supposed to run in the browser.
I bet Blizzard still has the original 3D-models they used for all units somewhere on their servers. Although even if we could use them, I doubt the game would look better - to the contrary.
Part of the magic of pixelated and thus blurry graphics is that it lets our brain and imagination fill in the details almost automatically. If you'd just capture higher res images of the same Marine 3D-model, it would look way too "clean", "cartoony" and like a "rendering of a Marine" (which it is ^_^) instead of an actual Marine.
So in order to make it look good again you actually have to fill in the details. And doing that in a way that doesn't look cheesy is a lot of work. There's a good reason todays high-end 3D-models take months of man-hours to create while a 3D-model in the 90's could've been done in a day.
And then there's the animation and rotation problem: In many sophisticated "HD-Remakes" of sprite-based games, in particular fighting games (but Brood War is sprite-based as well), it has been observed that our human brain is far less forgiving to accept choppy animations and limited body-rotation on high-resolution sprites than on low-resolution sprites - again dating back to the "brain filling in the details" part of fuzzy graphics. You simply can't add those to BW without substantially changing the game and gameplay itself.
But you know, each to their own - there's probably an audience that would enjoy "clean" high-res Brood War graphics. Although I bet for most, while it sounds cool on paper, the first reaction of seeing the final result would be similar to that of the first SC2 gameplay trailer back in 2007: 1. "it's kinda 'cartoony'"; 2. "doesn't look 'like' Brood War".
I, for one, would rather like to see the inherent fuzziness/blurryness of Brood War to be enhanced either with real-time rescaling filters or retouching the original sprites (which could be done seperatly for every client with a script so there are no copyright infringements). A nice and subtle CRT filter would already go a long way because those are the devices Brood War was made for and not modern LCDs.
On December 21 2016 18:51 nighcol wrote: That's why I suggested pixel art scaling algorithms as popularised by emulators. Those don't result in a blurry look but of course typically give pretty cartoony results[...]
nighcol: we have played around a bit with upscaling. It does indeed look cartoony. Maybe some people would like it and we could provide an option at some point in the future, to use original graphics up-scaled real-time.
Personally, I don't like the cartoony look too much, but that's individual taste and shouldn't keep us from providing it if there is demand.
The more important issue here is the copyright, which you didn't address in your reply to PhilipJayFry. The upscaled version requires you to provide the graphics yourself, since we won't host / distribute any material that is IP of Blizzard. In practice, this makes it more cumbersome to e.g. watch replays on a mobile device etc. Also new players would have to buy the original game first, which is a bit pointless.
On December 21 2016 21:10 shin ken wrote: Part of the magic of pixelated and thus blurry graphics is that it lets our brain and imagination fill in the details almost automatically. If you'd just capture higher res images of the same Marine 3D-model, it would look way too "clean", "cartoony" and like a "rendering of a Marine" (which it is ^_^) instead of an actual Marine.
So in order to make it look good again you actually have to fill in the details. And doing that in a way that doesn't look cheesy is a lot of work. There's a good reason todays high-end 3D-models take months of man-hours to create while a 3D-model in the 90's could've been done in a day.
And then there's the animation and rotation problem: In many sophisticated "HD-Remakes" of sprite-based games, in particular fighting games (but Brood War is sprite-based as well), it has been observed that our human brain is far less forgiving to accept choppy animations and limited body-rotation on high-resolution sprites than on low-resolution sprites - again dating back to the "brain filling in the details" part of fuzzy graphics. You simply can't add those to BW without substantially changing the game and gameplay itself.
But you know, each to their own - there's probably an audience that would enjoy "clean" high-res Brood War graphics. Although I bet for most, while it sounds cool on paper, the first reaction of seeing the final result would be similar to that of the first SC2 gameplay trailer back in 2007: 1. "it's kinda 'cartoony'"; 2. "doesn't look 'like' Brood War".
I, for one, would rather like to see the inherent fuzziness/blurryness of Brood War to be enhanced either with real-time rescaling filters or retouching the original sprites (which could be done seperatly for every client with a script so there are no copyright infringements). A nice and subtle CRT filter would already go a long way because those are the devices Brood War was made for and not modern LCDs.
shin ken: you bring up a couple of very good points. Regarding the animation and rotation problem there might be a solution. We can make animations smoother without altering the original game play in any way. But we will keep your points in mind. If you want to develop the CRT filter idea further we could take this to PM or chat. Of course the same practical issues apply, as pointed out in the reply to nighcol above.
On December 21 2016 03:58 thezanursic wrote: For models, I'd just like them retraced and made less pixelated, the valk model is a bit too much, it doesn't need to look like that, it looks a bit uncanny.
I'm not sure if it's possible, but I'd just sharpen out all the main units models and try to make them look as close as possible as they did in the original except sharper, essentially keeping the same art style
Sounds like you want to double the size of the original sprites and put some filter on them, which you could just use some upscale algorithm for.
They're going in the right direction, remodelling the asset while keeping the vanilla silhouette intact. If they feel the need to add detail, they could use official renders and concept art for inspiration.
Totally agree! Do you have a good resource of such art?
On December 21 2016 23:32 imp42 wrote: The more important issue here is the copyright, which you didn't address in your reply to PhilipJayFry. The upscaled version requires you to provide the graphics yourself, since we won't host / distribute any material that is IP of Blizzard. In practice, this makes it more cumbersome to e.g. watch replays on a mobile device etc. Also new players would have to buy the original game first, which is a bit pointless.
I addressed it in a way but with the caveat of it maybe being a problem when creating something that runs in a browser. The emulators (and things like ScummVM) do the scaling of the original on the fly based on the original art assets so they don't have to distribute any of the scaled versions. Even in the best case that means more loading time...
Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
On December 21 2016 23:32 imp42 wrote: The more important issue here is the copyright, which you didn't address in your reply to PhilipJayFry. The upscaled version requires you to provide the graphics yourself, since we won't host / distribute any material that is IP of Blizzard. In practice, this makes it more cumbersome to e.g. watch replays on a mobile device etc. Also new players would have to buy the original game first, which is a bit pointless.
[..] Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
A valid point. However, if a judge looks at the following image. Could he establish whether a high-res HD model really is a derivative?
I am not so sure
Edit: edited out an image. Changed sentence to refer to only one image.
On December 21 2016 23:32 imp42 wrote: The more important issue here is the copyright, which you didn't address in your reply to PhilipJayFry. The upscaled version requires you to provide the graphics yourself, since we won't host / distribute any material that is IP of Blizzard. In practice, this makes it more cumbersome to e.g. watch replays on a mobile device etc. Also new players would have to buy the original game first, which is a bit pointless.
[..] Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
A valid point. However, if a judge looks at the following two images. Would he say the first is a derivative of the second? + Show Spoiler +
I am not so sure
You can also compare to the original concept art / render that was posted earlier in the thread, though and while it isn't identical all these designs have many elements in common. Also, even if a single unit isn't an obvious derived work, a judge would consider all the art as a whole and then the similarities start to become more numerous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really a fan of this project and that Valkyrie is awesome but I wouldn't want to see anyone get into trouble with Blizzard after they've worked on something a long time like these things tend to go.
Some game developers are more accepting of these things than others even when they have a case for shutting something down. Not quite sure where Blizzard stands these days but I imagine one thing they might not like is something that doesn't require licensing their product at all while staying close to the original.
On December 21 2016 23:32 imp42 wrote: The more important issue here is the copyright, which you didn't address in your reply to PhilipJayFry. The upscaled version requires you to provide the graphics yourself, since we won't host / distribute any material that is IP of Blizzard. In practice, this makes it more cumbersome to e.g. watch replays on a mobile device etc. Also new players would have to buy the original game first, which is a bit pointless.
[..] Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
A valid point. However, if a judge looks at the following two images. Would he say the first is a derivative of the second? + Show Spoiler +
I am not so sure
You can also compare to the original concept art / render that was posted earlier in the thread, though and while it isn't identical all these designs have many elements in common. Also, even if a single unit isn't an obvious derived work, a judge would consider all the art as a whole and then the similarities start to become more numerous.
Don't get me wrong, I'm really a fan of this project and that Valkyrie is awesome but I wouldn't want to see anyone get into trouble with Blizzard after they've worked on something a long time like these things tend to go.
Some game developers are more accepting of these things than others even when they have a case for shutting something down. Not quite sure where Blizzard stands these days but I imagine one thing they might not like is something that doesn't require licensing their product at all while staying close to the original.
I appreciate that you raise these concerns. It's a topic worth discussing and we need to get it a 100% right.
As pointed out before and in the FAQ, we are serious about respecting others IP. One measure is to completely separate the game engine from the artwork. This is the path that we're going already by just providing JavaScript to be used with the original MPQ files. The protected material has to be provided by the user. Whether a user owns a license is not our problem, though we strongly encourage it.
We could continue to use this approach for our own artwork. That is, complete separation down to hosting on separate servers. We also need to consider international law more than just U.S. law. Currently we host in a country where download of copyright material for personal use is not illegal. Yet another point: we are not an organization that constitutes a legal entity, just a group of individuals working for free and residing in many different countries all over the world. This further minimizes attack surface.
On December 21 2016 23:41 BossPurple wrote: Unfortunately no, you can find some of it on starcraft.wikia.com though.
Ok, thanks BossPurple!
On December 21 2016 23:46 nighcol wrote: Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
You are right. I think this question must be cleared before fully working on the assets. If there is no information available about this topic, we maybe can contact creativecommons.
On December 21 2016 23:46 nighcol wrote: Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
You are right. I think this question must be cleared before fully working on the assets. If there is no information available about this topic, we maybe can contact creativecommons.
If you browse through court rulings and copyright literature you will find that laws distinguish between "derivative work" and "transformative work". In both variations courts had to settle cases where the derivative or transformation contained pieces of the original art work. I have yet to find an example where a court ruled against graphical artwork that was created from scratch and was merely inspired by protected material.
It is always about altering existing material. Creating your own from scratch is not even an issue. IMO high-res models created from scratch are well beyond the threshold required for transformative-ness an fair-use.
Edit: btw: I want to stress that this discussion is very valuable and this is not about "winning an argument in a TL thread". I welcome any input, objections, and concerns on this topic. It helps us set up things the right way - and hopefully "air-tight"
On December 21 2016 07:05 tscmoo wrote: All zerg units except devourers should now work, so the replay viewer can now play TvT, TvZ and ZvZ.
There might still be some special cases that are not implemented, or desyncs. Also haven’t tested guardians (hopefully they work). Some graphical glitches should be fixed too, like the tank muzzle flash going off in the wrong direction.
If you get any errors or desyncs then please report them in the comments 😀
Was doing a little digging, found the full screenshot of the mock up of BW HD that is teased in the OP:
Looks amazing; that Muta model is awesome! I think the Valkyrie could use a bit of a resize though, especially in the middle part of the model. It's not as chibi/cartoony looking as broodwar and its a bit offputting.
Edit: You can also see a tidbit of the UI in the bottom left corner, looking great as well so far!
Mad respect and props to the development team of this - It's amazing to see the community taking the matter into their own hands and doing it themselves since Blizzard shows no definitive signs of doing anything. I pray Open BW does not get shut down, it deserves to see the light of day!
On December 21 2016 23:46 nighcol wrote: Of course it would be great if you're able to create something that doesn't need the original assets at all... but I think there's a very big chance of that running into copyright issues as well if you just model everything in BW very close to the original but with a higher resolution. This kind of a work would be considered derivative of the original game's art.
You are right. I think this question must be cleared before fully working on the assets. If there is no information available about this topic, we maybe can contact creativecommons.
If you browse through court rulings and copyright literature you will find that laws distinguish between "derivative work" and "transformative work". In both variations courts had to settle cases where the derivative or transformation contained pieces of the original art work. I have yet to find an example where a court ruled against graphical artwork that was created from scratch and was merely inspired by protected material.
It is always about altering existing material. Creating your own from scratch is not even an issue. IMO high-res models created from scratch are well beyond the threshold required for transformative-ness an fair-use.
I think for example this one mentioned in your first link is an example of a case where the new photo did not directly use the original. While it was found not to be infringing because it was considered a parody, the court says nothing about not using the original art being a factor in the decision. Also the examples about original books & stories that use characters from another work such as the well known Catcher in the Rye case don't really use the original in a direct way.
This video of a presentation by a lawyer at Comic-con about fan art embedded in the blog post also seems relevant: http://chrisoatley.com/fan-art/
I don't know if Starcraft units are something that you could consider to be "characters" but they might, especially since they have some backstory, concept art/renders etc.
On December 22 2016 16:47 l3rand0n wrote: Was doing a little digging, found the full screenshot of the mock up of BW HD that is teased in the OP:
Looks amazing; that Muta model is awesome! I think the Valkyrie could use a bit of a resize though, especially in the middle part of the model. It's not as chibi/cartoony looking as broodwar and its a bit offputting.
Edit: You can also see a tidbit of the UI in the bottom left corner, looking great as well so far!
Mad respect and props to the development team of this - It's amazing to see the community taking the matter into their own hands and doing it themselves since Blizzard shows no definitive signs of doing anything. I pray Open BW does not get shut down, it deserves to see the light of day!
I'm the one who made that mockup screenshot— glad you like it! I should stress, it is a mockup, not an actual gameplay screenshot. The terrain I made by altering and clone-tooling together free stock texture images, it sadly isn't a functional tileset— yet! The Valkyrie and Mutalisk will also both get another improvement pass in the future, the exact texture/rendering setups for the final graphics are still being worked on. More units to come...
On December 23 2016 03:19 xiaorobear wrote: I'm the one who made that mockup screenshot— glad you like it! I should stress, it is a mockup, not an actual gameplay screenshot. The terrain I made by altering and clone-tooling together free stock texture images, it sadly isn't a functional tileset— yet! The Valkyrie and Mutalisk will also both get another improvement pass in the future, the exact texture/rendering setups for the final graphics are still being worked on. More units to come...
I'm most excited about the HD part of this project and you did an excellent job so far if you made that Valkyrie and Mutalisk. I think it seems like an extremely hard task to maintain the gritty and industrial feel that Brood War has in which Starcraft 2 didn't continue with (and ended up looking a lot more "cartoony"). But so far, I really REALLY like how the design is. Still has that Brood War feel to it. Keep up the awesome work.
Also on another note, when I first saw this thread I saw that only Terran was available for the replay viewer so I didn't bother to check it out. Now Zerg is out as well which was pretty fast and I tried out the replay viewer and it is awesome. Being able to rewind is such a godsend. That feature along makes this an invaluable tool. There are definitely suggestions I have, that I'm sure may be in the pipeline or have already been suggested (Worker count, replay time, being able to see what is researching) but yeah, this is extremely awesome. And how fast the updates come is really promising.
On December 23 2016 03:19 xiaorobear wrote: I'm the one who made that mockup screenshot— glad you like it! I should stress, it is a mockup, not an actual gameplay screenshot. The terrain I made by altering and clone-tooling together free stock texture images, it sadly isn't a functional tileset— yet! The Valkyrie and Mutalisk will also both get another improvement pass in the future, the exact texture/rendering setups for the final graphics are still being worked on. More units to come...
[...]There are definitely suggestions I have, that I'm sure may be in the pipeline or have already been suggested (Worker count, replay time, being able to see what is researching) but yeah, this is extremely awesome. And how fast the updates come is really promising.
Could you specify what you mean by worker count and replay time? The total worker count is displayed between the "gas" and the "army" count, the current replay time is displayed just above the pause control (the browser window should be about 7x as wide as the minimap width for everything to display correctly).
"currently researching" / "research done" tab is in the pipeline.
On December 23 2016 03:19 xiaorobear wrote: I'm the one who made that mockup screenshot— glad you like it! I should stress, it is a mockup, not an actual gameplay screenshot. The terrain I made by altering and clone-tooling together free stock texture images, it sadly isn't a functional tileset— yet! The Valkyrie and Mutalisk will also both get another improvement pass in the future, the exact texture/rendering setups for the final graphics are still being worked on. More units to come...
[...]There are definitely suggestions I have, that I'm sure may be in the pipeline or have already been suggested (Worker count, replay time, being able to see what is researching) but yeah, this is extremely awesome. And how fast the updates come is really promising.
Could you specify what you mean by worker count and replay time? The total worker count is displayed between the "gas" and the "army" count, the current replay time is displayed just above the pause control (the browser window should be about 7x as wide as the minimap width for everything to display correctly).
"currently researching" / "research done" tab is in the pipeline.
Let us know of your other suggestions!
Holy shit I'm retarded. You're right. I have no idea how i missed those things. I guess I'm just so used to looking for them in different places.
On December 22 2016 10:43 xiaorobear wrote: I loaded a TvZ replay (this one), and while it started fine when I tried to advance to the middle of the replay I got a fatal error. screenshot
fun thing about this replay is that the player colors differs from those when watching replay in normal way. Also there is a 3rd player = observer which may casue some isues
On December 23 2016 15:45 SCC-Faust wrote: I'm most excited about the HD part of this project and you did an excellent job so far if you made that Valkyrie and Mutalisk. I think it seems like an extremely hard task to maintain the gritty and industrial feel that Brood War has in which Starcraft 2 didn't continue with (and ended up looking a lot more "cartoony"). But so far, I really REALLY like how the design is. Still has that Brood War feel to it. Keep up the awesome work.
Thank you! I did make them both, though I may end up focusing primarily on the Zerg... I have a feeling someone else will be doing an even better job of capturing that industrial terran feel in the near future...
For now, have a couple gifs of some classic mutalisk flapping action (This is probably larger than the final 'HD' sprites will be).
On December 23 2016 15:45 SCC-Faust wrote: I'm most excited about the HD part of this project and you did an excellent job so far if you made that Valkyrie and Mutalisk. I think it seems like an extremely hard task to maintain the gritty and industrial feel that Brood War has in which Starcraft 2 didn't continue with (and ended up looking a lot more "cartoony"). But so far, I really REALLY like how the design is. Still has that Brood War feel to it. Keep up the awesome work.
Thank you! I did make them both, though I may end up focusing primarily on the Zerg... I have a feeling someone else will be doing an even better job of capturing that industrial terran feel in the near future...
For now, have a couple gifs of some classic mutalisk flapping action (This is probably larger than the final 'HD' sprites will be).
I love how that Mutalisk looks. Very accurate to the funky prerendered work in the manual, which I know is the idea here. We're just all used to Modern Blizzard Mutalisks instead of what they were actually supposed to look like in the SC1 era, silly as it may be.
On December 25 2016 05:42 Biolunar wrote: Looks like a shrimp with wings sorry :D
The mock-up did look better Although I suppose that is with filters applied, and lower res.
Haha, yeah, that sort of thing does change a lot. On any model things like the level of detail and strength of bump maps should change depending on how big it's meant to be seen, so as resolutions and rendering setups are finalized, expect improvements. Everything is still subject to change.
Another factor might be that those gifs are at the same (low) framerate as the original flapping animation. We'll see if that's something that ends up changing as well...
And I remember people calling mutalisks flying shrimps back in elementary school, brings me back.
Ohh come on, that muta is just fine! The important thing is that the graphics are clear and you can see each seperate ground unit even in big battles. Bw is not ment to be eyecandy anyways. If graphics is what you want, i suggest trying a game from this millennium.
if some people think the HD mutalisk looks a little bit like a shrimp then those comments just serve as testimony of how great of a job xiaorobear did on his objective to stay true to the original.
After all, it is not the first time the association has been made
As both a BW veteran and professional software developer, this is an amazing achievement. Can't believe someone would have the motivation to undertake such a project.
On December 31 2016 14:21 tscmoo wrote: Unit selection/health bars now work. yey
dont work for me
Be sure that you have our latest JavaScript files. In Firefox you can do this by pressing the "Reload" icon. If your download speed is anything like mine (not too fast) you will then experience a noticeable delay when reloading the page, since a couple of megabytes are downloaded.
We will look into better version management in the future.
On December 31 2016 14:21 tscmoo wrote: Unit selection/health bars now work. yey
dont work for me
Be sure that you have our latest JavaScript files. In Firefox you can do this by pressing the "Reload" icon. If your download speed is anything like mine (not too fast) you will then experience a noticeable delay when reloading the page, since a couple of megabytes are downloaded.
We will look into better version management in the future.
im using chrome but reloading the page didnt help. Trying IE too and it just says: Status Downloading ....rep for 5 minutes now
On December 31 2016 14:21 tscmoo wrote: Unit selection/health bars now work. yey
dont work for me
Be sure that you have our latest JavaScript files. In Firefox you can do this by pressing the "Reload" icon. If your download speed is anything like mine (not too fast) you will then experience a noticeable delay when reloading the page, since a couple of megabytes are downloaded.
We will look into better version management in the future.
im using chrome but reloading the page didnt help. Trying IE too and it just says: Status Downloading ....rep for 5 minutes now
Could you send us the output of the web console in Chrome?
Edit: you can also use our feedback forum for bug reports from now on:
I like your initiative. It is very nice to see dedicated person trying to make this game great again. So far, the Mutalisk and Valkyrie images are very gorgeous! The browser replay feature is very cool too.
I just registered to your forum and I'm looking to help you find out problems or opportunities. Thank you for your great work.
Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
On January 05 2017 03:13 Guojing12 wrote: Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
Indeed, this could possibly even attract some new players to the scene but blizzard would propably send their lawyer army if it turned out successful.
On January 05 2017 03:13 Guojing12 wrote: Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
Yeah I'm actually disappointed about this. Maybe SB doesn't want the possibility of subtle differences in the game engine?
On January 05 2017 03:13 Guojing12 wrote: Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
Yeah I'm actually disappointed about this. Maybe SB doesn't want the possibility of subtle differences in the game engine?
All I can say is we're being completely ignored and don't know the reason. Personally I would like to let the matter rest for a while. At the same time I understand people will ask over and over about an integration. But I can only speculate and public speculation is hardly going to improve the situation, so I will refrain from doing so.
regarding the subtle differences in the game engine: replays actually re-play the game by executing commands stored in the replay file in exactly the same way it was originally played. This is the reason why you can't move back or insta-jump forward in the original Brood War when watching a replay.
As a consequence of this mechanism replays will desync at the slightest difference between original BW and OpenBW. Imagine for example if we didn't include the bug where units get stuck at a ramp. Then they would manage to get up the ramp and reach their originally intended target, leading to a very different game state and subsequently to a complete desync.
There are two advantages to this: a) whether we should stay true to the original behavior is not a question, but a MUST b) we can easily test the OpenBW engine by running replays in original BW and OpenBW simultaneously and compare the game state.
On January 05 2017 03:13 Guojing12 wrote: Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
Yeah I'm actually disappointed about this. Maybe SB doesn't want the possibility of subtle differences in the game engine?
All I can say is we're being completely ignored and don't know the reason. Personally I would like to let the matter rest for a while. At the same time I understand people will ask over and over about an integration. But I can only speculate and public speculation is hardly going to improve the situation, so I will refrain from doing so.
regarding the subtle differences in the game engine: replays actually re-play the game by executing commands stored in the replay file in exactly the same way it was originally played. This is the reason why you can't move back or insta-jump forward in the original Brood War when watching a replay.
As a consequence of this mechanism replays will desync at the slightest difference between original BW and OpenBW. Imagine for example if we didn't include the bug where units get stuck at a ramp. Then they would manage to get up the ramp and reach their originally intended target, leading to a very different game state and subsequently to a complete desync.
There are two advantages to this: a) whether we should stay true to the original behavior is not a question, but a MUST b) we can easily test the OpenBW engine by running replays in original BW and OpenBW simultaneously and compare the game state.
But how do you account for the super rare bugs? I recall someone was able to un-infest a command center one time, it's barely even documented or mentioned anywhere.
On January 05 2017 03:13 Guojing12 wrote: Doesn't it sound weird that SB is "clearly not interested" ? If you combine both, you get an HD broodwar with all modern features for playing and watching so maybe im missing some point...
Yeah I'm actually disappointed about this. Maybe SB doesn't want the possibility of subtle differences in the game engine?
All I can say is we're being completely ignored and don't know the reason. Personally I would like to let the matter rest for a while. At the same time I understand people will ask over and over about an integration. But I can only speculate and public speculation is hardly going to improve the situation, so I will refrain from doing so.
regarding the subtle differences in the game engine: replays actually re-play the game by executing commands stored in the replay file in exactly the same way it was originally played. This is the reason why you can't move back or insta-jump forward in the original Brood War when watching a replay.
As a consequence of this mechanism replays will desync at the slightest difference between original BW and OpenBW. Imagine for example if we didn't include the bug where units get stuck at a ramp. Then they would manage to get up the ramp and reach their originally intended target, leading to a very different game state and subsequently to a complete desync.
There are two advantages to this: a) whether we should stay true to the original behavior is not a question, but a MUST b) we can easily test the OpenBW engine by running replays in original BW and OpenBW simultaneously and compare the game state.
But how do you account for the super rare bugs? I recall someone was able to un-infest a command center one time, it's barely even documented or mentioned anywhere.
Of course there's always a chance that something is missed. It's software development after all. It comes with bugs. But thanks to bwreplays.com we have about 250'000 potential test cases
tscmoo actually found that some gameplay bugs are introduced by corrupt maps. It seems like "protected" maps are just maps that have been corrupted in a way such that the game is still able to load them while the editor isn't. This is quite a hack and has potential side effects.
IIRC specifically one bug causing units to get stuck at a ramp occurs only in the upper half of a protected map. Theoretically this could lead to unintended unfair advantage for a player spawning at the top.
But how do you account for the super rare bugs? I recall someone was able to un-infest a command center one time, it's barely even documented or mentioned anywhere.
That's the kind of bug that I'd imagine most people wouldn't be against fixing since it's not something that affects the gameplay anymore if it's super rarely encountered and not reliably reproducible.
On January 05 2017 19:09 BossPurple wrote: Do you have an automated setup where you (a computer) are constantly running replays and checking for problems / desync issues?
Not yet, but IMO that would be the correct setup for integration tests. Possibly in conjunction with a nightly build or weekly build. I would like to get this done once we have a "version 1.0" including Protoss.
But how do you account for the super rare bugs? I recall someone was able to un-infest a command center one time, it's barely even documented or mentioned anywhere.
That's the kind of bug that I'd imagine most people wouldn't be against fixing since it's not something that affects the gameplay anymore if it's super rarely encountered and not reliably reproducible.
Once we fix even one single tiny bug we need an elaborated versioning system in place. Personally I'm not against bug-fixing. We should just be very cautious about it and make sure users are able to choose their preferred version. Sometimes the line between "bug" and "feature" is blurry.
On January 07 2017 01:55 Piste wrote: Are there any videos available from openbw testing?
We don't have any videos, no. What exactly did you have in mind?
And: if anyone wants to cast a game using OpenBW or do a short introduction of how to use the controls we'd be happy to upload the video to our youtube channel.
quuad is taking over the lead for the BW HD module. We are very excited to have quuad in charge of BW HD. Not only is he immensely talented, but he also brought his own supply: + Show Spoiler +
Social Media
We're now present on Twitter, Youtube, Reddit. Of course you can always visit our forum to discuss anything related to OpenBW.
On January 10 2017 12:30 prOxi.swAMi wrote: Awesome news about Protoss.
But I just went to openbw.com to do a TvP replay and got a 500 error. What's up with that?
Cheers
Sorry, you caught me in the middle of an update. It normally goes unnoticed, but this time I messed up a dependency.
On January 10 2017 12:33 xboi209 wrote: May I suggest that instead of creating an entirely new subreddit, merge with /r/broodwar?
I just posted a simple link to the replay viewer in /r/broodwar and it got downvoted immediately. I figured it's better if other people post about OpenBW in /r/broodwar if they're interested, so I deleted the link again. Anyways, now the mod linked our tweet instead.
On January 10 2017 12:33 xboi209 wrote: May I suggest that instead of creating an entirely new subreddit, merge with /r/broodwar?
I just posted a simple link to the replay viewer in /r/broodwar and it got downvoted immediately. I figured it's better if other people post about OpenBW in /r/broodwar if they're interested, so I deleted the link again. Anyways, now the mod linked our tweet instead.
I believe it has something to do with how Reddit works, I don't think anyone actually downvoted your post. Anyways, I am the mod at /r/broodwar :p
On January 10 2017 12:33 xboi209 wrote: May I suggest that instead of creating an entirely new subreddit, merge with /r/broodwar?
I just posted a simple link to the replay viewer in /r/broodwar and it got downvoted immediately. I figured it's better if other people post about OpenBW in /r/broodwar if they're interested, so I deleted the link again. Anyways, now the mod linked our tweet instead.
I believe it has something to do with how Reddit works, I don't think anyone actually downvoted your post. Anyways, I am the mod at /r/broodwar :p
hah, I suspected, but it's always difficult to map different nicks on different platforms to the same person in that case, thanks for the link!
The idea of combining both this and SB projects into 1 is mind blowing.
I'd 100% come back if that were ever a fact and possibly dominate the SC scene once more ^_^!
I think this idea would definitely bring starcraft back to at least it's original point before it died if not more active than it ever has been.
Main concerns would be blizzard trolling for copyrights.One hopes that they understand some of us are still huge fans of the game and that they are respectful of peoples hard work. Based on what ive read, think those chances are slim.
On January 07 2017 01:55 Piste wrote: Are there any videos available from openbw testing?
We don't have any videos, no. What exactly did you have in mind?
And: if anyone wants to cast a game using OpenBW or do a short introduction of how to use the controls we'd be happy to upload the video to our youtube channel.
On January 07 2017 01:55 Piste wrote: Are there any videos available from openbw testing?
We don't have any videos, no. What exactly did you have in mind?
And: if anyone wants to cast a game using OpenBW or do a short introduction of how to use the controls we'd be happy to upload the video to our youtube channel.
I know you probably answered this somewhere in the thread, so could you include in the OP some thoughts about how you are going to avoid violating intellectual property law? I think it might be worth talking to a lawyer who specializes in copyright law before you spend a year or more of your lives on this. You also need to protect the integrity of the open sourceness of this project. It's not enough for one of the maintainers to own the copyrights... that's not open source since you maintain control.
To me it sounds impossible to avoid violating IP while faithfully creating BW, so allay my concerns in the OP. Obviously the joy of an open source BW would be no limitations on leagues and tournaments using it, I can see the benefit, but besides that I've seen knock-off products before in dollar stores, what's the evidence you could get away with this? Blizzard is pretty powerful and is still interesting in making money off SC, even the original.
On January 11 2017 03:14 Chef wrote: I know you probably answered this somewhere in the thread, so could you include in the OP some thoughts about how you are going to avoid violating intellectual property law? I think it might be worth talking to a lawyer who specializes in copyright law before you spend a year or more of your lives on this.
The first question in our FAQ addresses this topic.
You also need to protect the integrity of the open sourceness of this project. It's not enough for one of the maintainers to own the copyrights... that's not open source since you maintain control.
The way I understand open source works is the ownership and copyright always remain with the author. The author gives anyone interested a license to use the source. Most of the times this license is free. But most of the times the license also comes with limitations. For example, you are limited in your possibilities to commercially exploit the source or you are required to make available any derivative work as open-source as well (see "copyleft").
There are many different flavors. For art work we are thinking CC-BY-SA 4.0. For source code possibly one of the GNU licenses. See here for a list and more information: opensource.org
To me it sounds impossible to avoid violating IP while faithfully creating BW, so allay my concerns in the OP. Obviously the joy of an open source BW would be no limitations on leagues and tournaments using it, I can see the benefit, but besides that I've seen knock-off products before in dollar stores, what's the evidence you could get away with this? Blizzard is pretty powerful and is still interesting in making money off SC, even the original.
We base our case on the fact that we do not host any material created by Blizzard. Software code cannot be patented and game rules cannot be protected (in the U.S.). We are therefore free to write our own code (without using the unpublished copyright-protected original source, to which we don't have access in the first place!) implementing the exact same game rules.
Areas of concern are: - graphical artwork - sound - character names of units and characters invented by Blizz with a background story, etc.
We therefore do not host any of the original data. If you want to enjoy original artwork we require you to provide your own data files locally, obtained from a legal copy of Brood War.
On January 07 2017 01:55 Piste wrote: Are there any videos available from openbw testing?
We don't have any videos, no. What exactly did you have in mind?
And: if anyone wants to cast a game using OpenBW or do a short introduction of how to use the controls we'd be happy to upload the video to our youtube channel.
On January 11 2017 03:14 Chef wrote: I know you probably answered this somewhere in the thread, so could you include in the OP some thoughts about how you are going to avoid violating intellectual property law? I think it might be worth talking to a lawyer who specializes in copyright law before you spend a year or more of your lives on this.
The first question in our FAQ addresses this topic.
You also need to protect the integrity of the open sourceness of this project. It's not enough for one of the maintainers to own the copyrights... that's not open source since you maintain control.
The way I understand open source works is the ownership and copyright always remain with the author. The author gives anyone interested a license to use the source. Most of the times this license is free. But most of the times the license also comes with limitations. For example, you are limited in your possibilities to commercially exploit the source or you are required to make available any derivative work as open-source as well (see "copyleft").
There are many different flavors. For art work we are thinking CC-BY-SA 4.0. For source code possibly one of the GNU licenses. See here for a list and more information: opensource.org
To me it sounds impossible to avoid violating IP while faithfully creating BW, so allay my concerns in the OP. Obviously the joy of an open source BW would be no limitations on leagues and tournaments using it, I can see the benefit, but besides that I've seen knock-off products before in dollar stores, what's the evidence you could get away with this? Blizzard is pretty powerful and is still interesting in making money off SC, even the original.
We base our case on the fact that we do not host any material created by Blizzard. Software code cannot be patented and game rules cannot be protected (in the U.S.). We are therefore free to write our own code (without using the unpublished copyright-protected original source, to which we don't have access in the first place!) implementing the exact same game rules.
Areas of concern are: - graphical artwork - sound - character names of units and characters invented by Blizz with a background story, etc.
We therefore do not host any of the original data. If you want to enjoy original artwork we require you to provide your own data files locally, obtained from a legal copy of Brood War.
Should unit/character names have to be redone, I think it's fitting that we should have a community debate about what they would all be. Also, wouldn't simply dropping the name Terran on, say, a Terran Marine, be sufficient to avoid a copyright claim? Blizzard does not own the term 'Marine' no? To take it a step further, you could simply rename Marines to Space Marines?
As for graphical artwork and sounds, again like you have been saying, you guys do not provide that, nor does your rendition of the code that you will be making open source. These items are provided by the player, who is expected to have purchased a legal copy of the original StarCraft game from Blizzard.
You know, it may also be worthy to note that Blizzard may simply let the project slide as long as they can still earn their money off it. I think, to put myself in the developers shoes here, that if I saw the community for a game I helped create nearly 20 years ago making their own, standalone rendition of it due to it's age and the company I work for's own neglect of remastering the project, that I would be astonished that the community would go to that length, and even possibly look to support them. Of course, on the legal side of things, there would most likely be a discussion of whether or not it would be wise to let the community get away with this from Blizzard's commercial standpoint, and that may complicate the matter.
I wonder how this would go down in a courtroom, should that ever happen.
On January 11 2017 03:14 Chef wrote: I know you probably answered this somewhere in the thread, so could you include in the OP some thoughts about how you are going to avoid violating intellectual property law? I think it might be worth talking to a lawyer who specializes in copyright law before you spend a year or more of your lives on this.
The first question in our FAQ addresses this topic.
You also need to protect the integrity of the open sourceness of this project. It's not enough for one of the maintainers to own the copyrights... that's not open source since you maintain control.
The way I understand open source works is the ownership and copyright always remain with the author. The author gives anyone interested a license to use the source. Most of the times this license is free. But most of the times the license also comes with limitations. For example, you are limited in your possibilities to commercially exploit the source or you are required to make available any derivative work as open-source as well (see "copyleft").
There are many different flavors. For art work we are thinking CC-BY-SA 4.0. For source code possibly one of the GNU licenses. See here for a list and more information: opensource.org
To me it sounds impossible to avoid violating IP while faithfully creating BW, so allay my concerns in the OP. Obviously the joy of an open source BW would be no limitations on leagues and tournaments using it, I can see the benefit, but besides that I've seen knock-off products before in dollar stores, what's the evidence you could get away with this? Blizzard is pretty powerful and is still interesting in making money off SC, even the original.
We base our case on the fact that we do not host any material created by Blizzard. Software code cannot be patented and game rules cannot be protected (in the U.S.). We are therefore free to write our own code (without using the unpublished copyright-protected original source, to which we don't have access in the first place!) implementing the exact same game rules.
Areas of concern are: - graphical artwork - sound - character names of units and characters invented by Blizz with a background story, etc.
We therefore do not host any of the original data. If you want to enjoy original artwork we require you to provide your own data files locally, obtained from a legal copy of Brood War.
Thanks. It's a little confusing that you have two faqs with different questions answered. I appreciate the explanation about open source, actually not sure what I was thinking. I guess I was confusing public domain with open source, where you CAN modify, sell, etc as you please. Fair distinction.
I'm not super confident you've skirted everything, but I guess the project will adapt if anything comes up. Sounds like you at least made some initial effort to learn the broad strokes, so best of luck! Seems like art is the last thing to worry about if you get everything underneath working.
On January 12 2017 08:49 Canadianboy wrote: @imp42 , will you guys try to make BW HD's atmosphere just like the original game. I feel like it has to have that same dark and gritty feeling.
xiaorobear and quuad, the two main contributors of the BW HD module, are not only very talented professionals, but they both also demonstrate excellent attention to detail and care deeply about staying true to the original. When I see how they write entire paragraphs discussing the mouth of the Ultralisk or other details I feel very confident about the outcome
Also, I announced quuad took the lead of BW HD, so it's him whom you should ask now ^^ I will just do my best to provide the infrastructure and organization such that everyone can collaborate smoothly.
On January 12 2017 08:49 Canadianboy wrote: @imp42 , will you guys try to make BW HD's atmosphere just like the original game. I feel like it has to have that same dark and gritty feeling.
xiaorobear and quuad, the two main contributors of the BW HD module, are not only very talented professionals, but they both also demonstrate excellent attention to detail and care deeply about staying true to the original. When I see how they write entire paragraphs discussing the mouth of the Ultralisk or other details I feel very confident about the outcome
Also, I announced quuad took the lead of BW HD, so it's him whom you should ask now ^^ I will just do my best to provide the infrastructure and organization such that everyone can collaborate smoothly.
You guys rock!
For the replay viewer could you perhaps also make it possible to mouse grab/drag with mouse3 (pressing down the mouse scroll button)? That's been the standard in most RTS/ARTS games for a while now, and what most people are used to.
Regarding the copyright issues, it would make me feel much better if you separated the HD graphics project from the rest as much as possible since I think that has a high chance of becoming something Blizzard attacks if you go forward with faithfully reproducing the BW art. Especially when with some units there are already more detailed versions of them even in SC2 (I'm sure some of them are much closer to the BW version than with the above supply depot).
On January 12 2017 23:30 fazek42 wrote: This supply depot looks cooler
Is it the same author / work but high res?
No, that image is from the defunct WC3 mod Project Revolution from about 10 years ago, a big inspiration to me back in the day. Their Terran building models in particular were definitely amazing, but they ran into a lot of headaches with the WC3 engine, and the super low poly counts and low-res textures limited their Zerg art a lot. They got the Terran race playable before the project sadly died, here's a TL thread from back then.
On January 13 2017 23:49 HaFnium wrote: For some reasons my production/units tabs aren't working - have tried different replays and browsers. Used to work for me...
On January 13 2017 23:49 HaFnium wrote: For some reasons my production/units tabs aren't working - have tried different replays and browsers. Used to work for me...
On January 13 2017 23:49 HaFnium wrote: For some reasons my production/units tabs aren't working - have tried different replays and browsers. Used to work for me...
On January 15 2017 23:29 imp42 wrote: An original / HD comparison of our contributor Xloctis, who is currently working on HD icons:
Very nice, however the mini-gun could benefit from some clear borders between the various parts like the original so that it's easily identifiable even when it's smaller.
On January 16 2017 20:25 KawaiiSCV wrote: Will this have its own ladder or will it be able to connect to ICC/Fish?
in theory it should be compatible. But the issue will probably be anti-cheat.
1. afaik current anti-cheat mechanisms check memory prints and OpenBWs memory print looks different
2. OpenBW potentially allows every possible feature you can think of (extended viewport, select multiple buildings, even lift fow, auto-mine, ...). It being open-source will make it much easier for cheaters to actually implement such features and abuse them on ladder. Therefore, OpenBW needs its dedicated anti-cheat mechanisms. If we allow an OpenBW client to connect to ICC/Fish we need to make very sure that client does not give its user an unfair advantage.
I'm also envisioning at least 3 different modes. All modes except for the "original 1:1" will require a dedicated ladder anyways.
On January 16 2017 20:25 KawaiiSCV wrote: Will this have its own ladder or will it be able to connect to ICC/Fish?
in theory it should be compatible. But the issue will probably be anti-cheat.
1. afaik current anti-cheat mechanisms check memory prints and OpenBWs memory print looks different
2. OpenBW potentially allows every possible feature you can think of (extended viewport, select multiple buildings, even lift fow, auto-mine, ...). It being open-source will make it much easier for cheaters to actually implement such features and abuse them on ladder. Therefore, OpenBW needs its dedicated anti-cheat mechanisms. If we allow an OpenBW client to connect to ICC/Fish we need to make very sure that client does not give its user an unfair advantage.
I'm also envisioning at least 3 different modes. All modes except for the "original 1:1" will require a dedicated ladder anyways.
I don't think it'd be possible to implement any sort of anti-cheat mechanism for OpenBW.
On January 16 2017 20:25 KawaiiSCV wrote: Will this have its own ladder or will it be able to connect to ICC/Fish?
in theory it should be compatible. But the issue will probably be anti-cheat.
1. afaik current anti-cheat mechanisms check memory prints and OpenBWs memory print looks different
2. OpenBW potentially allows every possible feature you can think of (extended viewport, select multiple buildings, even lift fow, auto-mine, ...). It being open-source will make it much easier for cheaters to actually implement such features and abuse them on ladder. Therefore, OpenBW needs its dedicated anti-cheat mechanisms. If we allow an OpenBW client to connect to ICC/Fish we need to make very sure that client does not give its user an unfair advantage.
I'm also envisioning at least 3 different modes. All modes except for the "original 1:1" will require a dedicated ladder anyways.
I don't think it'd be possible to implement any sort of anti-cheat mechanism for OpenBW.
Elaborate? (Think e.g. closed source binaries with checksum mechanisms, etc)
On January 20 2017 04:39 Ziktofel wrote: @imp42: it contradicts the name "OpenBW"
just because our source is open doesn't mean servers like fish or iccup can't create their own closed-source binaries with protection mechanisms. We could just put a clause in the license or give permission to do so on an individual basis.
It would still be open source to a degree since the javascript code has to be sent to the web browser. Also, there would be nothing stopping someone from taking the OpenBW source and emulating private binaries.
On January 20 2017 06:35 xboi209 wrote: It would still be open source to a degree since the javascript code has to be sent to the web browser. Also, there would be nothing stopping someone from taking the OpenBW source and emulating private binaries.
the game client will be an executable compiled from c++. The JavaScript is only for the replay viewer.
regarding emulation of private binaries: yes, I've been thinking about that for a while. Probably there is a way to prevent that. Involving private/public key encryption, file checksums, and automatic updates.
It has been a while since my cryptography internship, but tscmoo has a concept in mind as well and I would probably trust his more than mine :p.
On January 24 2017 12:41 imp42 wrote: sound arrived.
Cool, could be used now for the LetaBot vs Krasi0 showmatch for the SSCAI.
Yes, I would say the replay viewer is ready to be used by casters now ^^ Maybe adjust habits to read upgrades from the upgrades tab rather than selecting a unit (there is no unit detail info yet).
On January 24 2017 13:21 wishbonesaka wrote: epic sound, is there going to be zoom in and out, as well as the fog that is in-game when watching replays?
zoom and fog of war are both scheduled. see also here: feature poll
I'm having a replay break for me. The usual thing where workers keep mining and nothing gets produced when that clearly isn't what happened in the real game. Tested it three times and it broke every time on the replay viewer. Tested it on normal launched starcraft and the replay did not break.
On January 25 2017 10:21 SCC-Faust wrote: I'm having a replay break for me. The usual thing where workers keep mining and nothing gets produced when that clearly isn't what happened in the real game. Tested it three times and it broke every time on the replay viewer. Tested it on normal launched starcraft and the replay did not break.
Hmm, I was trying to watch a replay like 4 times and it kept crashing (well the replay stopped running, chrome didn't crash or anything), and then I tried to take note of how it happened, and I recreated it 4x or so to confirm.
I was watching ICELab bot on one of the blue maps, not exactly sure which opponent he had. I'm trying to make it happen again, and now everything is running fine.
Sorry about that. If I see anything, I'll be more specific next time.
On January 28 2017 23:51 nepeta wrote: Casted the SSCAIT finals with openbw, so sweet
vod plz
What if they gave you a VOD and it was you in the finals and then you slowly realize you're actually just an AI and it wasn't you who improved and became gosu at Starcraft after all these years but rather you've been programmed to improve little by little every day. It was all in your code. Very spooky.
the openbw replay feature is amazing as scvs :D is this bot inspired in that protoss player that use to rush with probes ?
No, Naniwa rushed because he didn't want to play that game (he was going to be out of the tournament anyway)
My bot used it because some bots couldn't defend it. As I wrote down earlier, because of this the rush bot should no longer be able to place high in the upcoming AI tournaments:
Gotta say the replay-viewer saved me literally hours worth of work.
For whatever reason I can't load my replays in bwchart cause I keep getting an error and it will only load 10% of the actual replays. Googled it and Teamliquid had a thread that said if you have your computer set to Korean locale it will mess up the unicode or whatever and cause bwchart to not load replays correctly so I switched back and still had the same issue.
I was looking for an individual replay and I knew it was on La Mancha and I knew it was the only replay out of thousands that was played on La Mancha. And I wasn't going to fucking load each replay individually on Starcraft to look for it but I was determined to find it... so I just had the folder up and dropped them in the replay-viewer to see what map was being played in said replay. Literally 2 seconds per replay, the load time was fast. Took me around 10 minutes in an endeavor that could have taken way way longer. 2 seconds on openbw compared to atleast 30 seconds to scroll to a replay, host game, start it, leave, repeat on b.net.
Yup, don't worry, I definitely agree, quuad's supply depot knocked it out of the park— that's why he's the lead artist! The mutalisk is getting another pass to bring its lighting and contrast up to that level of quality as we speak.
On February 08 2017 01:39 DiMiaN wrote: Seems like the hd muta have wrong color palette, they doesnt fit atm.
we don't necessarily want HD units to blend in with original units. Rather they should be consistent with each other, such that the "HD only" experience looks cohesive.
The image post mostly meant to show we can insert any HD units into the game now. If you zoomed in, the HD unit would show its details while the original will just look pixelated.
On February 08 2017 01:39 DiMiaN wrote: Seems like the hd muta have wrong color palette, they doesnt fit atm.
we don't necessarily want HD units to blend in with original units. Rather they should be consistent with each other, such that the "HD only" experience looks cohesive.
The image post mostly meant to show we can insert any HD units into the game now. If you zoomed in, the HD unit would show its details while the original will just look pixelated.
Illustration:
can we get this image with the fighting bolognese please ?, i think the main problem is that is the muta hd into the original,so there is some contrast shock.
On February 08 2017 01:39 DiMiaN wrote: Seems like the hd muta have wrong color palette, they doesnt fit atm.
we don't necessarily want HD units to blend in with original units. Rather they should be consistent with each other, such that the "HD only" experience looks cohesive.
The image post mostly meant to show we can insert any HD units into the game now. If you zoomed in, the HD unit would show its details while the original will just look pixelated.
Illustration:
can we get this image with the fighting bolognese please ?[..]
On February 08 2017 01:39 DiMiaN wrote: Seems like the hd muta have wrong color palette, they doesnt fit atm.
we don't necessarily want HD units to blend in with original units. Rather they should be consistent with each other, such that the "HD only" experience looks cohesive.
The image post mostly meant to show we can insert any HD units into the game now. If you zoomed in, the HD unit would show its details while the original will just look pixelated.
Illustration:
can we get this image with the fighting bolognese please ?[..]
On February 08 2017 03:29 Intari wrote: That is beautiful! I'm sure you're on top of it imp42 but those brighter colors on the HD mutas are very off-putting.
Thanks for the frequent updates!
I think bright colors for units is almost a must. I love when you can find easily each individual unit from the map.
I don't have much input to give besides: look at whatever SC2 did and don't do that. There's no visual clarity; units blend into eachother. It's made even worse by exaggerated firing animations and explosions that obscure the view further.
Great job. One thing I noticed is if the player is yellow then the player's name is really hard to read = white on yellow. Imo a contrast color should be picked in that case like black. Also would it be possible to have a toggle show/hide for the time + time progress(=spoiler free reps)?
With the revival of the BW scene thanks to the ASL, this could not arrive at a better time. We need people to start playing that game again. I can't play it regularly due to not having windows. Also BW needs some open source clone really bad, it's been so long now and it needs so much updating.
I will contribute to the project as soon as I start learning C++ (next year) :D
On February 12 2017 19:24 LastWish wrote: Great job. One thing I noticed is if the player is yellow then the player's name is really hard to read = white on yellow. Imo a contrast color should be picked in that case like black. Also would it be possible to have a toggle show/hide for the time + time progress(=spoiler free reps)?
Hey LastWish
you have been granted (what a pun :p ) player names are now always white on dark grey with color in front. to show/hide progress bar press 'n'. the time shouldn't be a problem, right? (since it doesn't show how long the replay is).
is there anyone speaking Korean (native speaker preferred) who would be interested in doing a short tutorial video of the replay viewer to put on youtube?
On March 09 2017 14:10 B-royal wrote: Damn was hoping for another update since this is such an amazing project. Looking so forward to the next updates, very exciting!! :D
We are still very active, but mostly working on less visible features (BW AI IDE module and BWAPI port, for example).
In the meantime, have a look at the new graph feature in the replay viewer:
Press '5' to show/hide the graph. You can also click on the legend items to show/hide individual data lines.
Keep up your good work, I think I prefer OpenBW>BW:R for its easy web-browser interface, infinite selection, large screen size, and forward-thinking compatibility with bots
On March 28 2017 11:01 bITt.mAN wrote: So how do the OpenBW devs take the BW:R news?
First of all, any news that helps give the BW community a boost is good news.
We are also happy that OpenBW users will be able to use the original graphics for free, even though we're not sure yet if we are allowed to host any of the original data (just because it's free doesn't mean we're allowed to distribute it).
From the perspective of the bot developer community we wonder if we can use the programming interface with the new remastered version. Although, as long as the remastered version is fully compatible with the original version on patch 1.18 this is not critical. Furthermore, it would be very beneficial if 1.16.1 replays could still be used for machine learning. Else we have to start collecting replays from scratch. Since the game play will remain the same apart from bug fixes, that should be the case. The fact that the interface has remained stable for so long has been a huge advantage for bot developers. Hopefully we won't enter a new patch cycle.
We might have to support multiple versions (1.16.1 and 1.18) for the replay viewer, which creates some additional work.
The focus of OpenBW will shift away a bit from BW HD towards the other modules.
All in all we're optimistic that it turns out to be great news!
On March 28 2017 19:24 fazek42 wrote: And by shift away a bit you mean you'll abandon BWHD completely? Or you'll actually keep working on that?
It depends on the artists, really. As long artists contribute models the BW HD module lives on. I'm sure they want to see 'R' in action before they decide on how to proceed.
From the core / project side everything is set up such that artists can contribute independently. That is, the required functionality to get higher-quality sprites into the game already exists. So whenever somebody finishes a unit model he can just include it in the game by uploading it to a ftp server.
That's amazing! I'm really happy that you guys aren't just abandoning this project, it's amazing. And it's really cool to have such dedicated people in the community. Just as the SB thread, it's good to know that people are able / willing to make things happen, even if Blizzard should decide to stop contributing again.
It is cool to see that will keep up with the project. Replay module is such a major improvement and I'm glad I will be able to continue to use it!
Btw, do you think it could be possible to post pictures of your under development BW HD units? You showed some sneak peek and it would be nice to see what else you had!
On March 30 2017 21:40 Poly_Optimize wrote: It is cool to see that will keep up with the project. Replay module is such a major improvement and I'm glad I will be able to continue to use it!
Btw, do you think it could be possible to post pictures of your under development BW HD units? You showed some sneak peek and it would be nice to see what else you had!
I have some Zerg stuff in-progress I'll post. I love about 90% of the Remaster, I'm really happy with their decision to preserve all the old units' silhouettes instead of trying to modernize them or swap in the SC2 zergling or anything. There are some areas where I think there could be some improvement with lighting/shininess, but like I said I'm very, very happy with the direction they went.
Here was my not-yet-textured Queen's Nest model. With some bump/sculpted normal maps, I think it would've turned out very well:
And the remaster's version (not mine):
I'm also doing an extra-detailed job on the original Zergling, just because it's one of my favorites.
And I have a half-finished Hydralisk around too, a bit of a dragoon, dropship, an ultralisk, etc. Mostly just other models, as I was going to follow more of Quuad's lighting/texturing pipeline and revisit the muta and valkyrie I did at the start to go for a cohesive look. Quuad's stuff is more impressive (I still think his buildings look better than the Remaster's!), but I'll leave what he has to him.
I wasn't planning on having this much detail on the Zergling before the Remaster trailer dropped, but now I'm definitely going to finish it and try making some sprites from it just to see how I can stack up, now that I've seen their level of quality. Also it looks like they redesigned the zergling portrait head with a new look, which is also very cool and very zerg, but just doesn't look as faithful to the original as some of the other designs. So with my model I've gotta keep the old portrait alive, hah. They also redesigned the hydralisk sprite quite a bit (though the new portrait looks awesome), so I'll probably also finish my hydralisk again just to compare.
Although it has been a bit quiet lately, we've been very busy working on OpenBW.
Finally we have published all source code repositories and introduced a first version of the BW AI IDE. It contains a version of BWAPI compatible with OpenBW. That means, you can now develop and run Broodwar bots using free and open-source software on Linux. *
The source code Github repository is can be found here.
Happy coding!
* the only files that are NOT open-source are the 3 MPQ files from the original Broodwar. They are however free, since Blizzard made the original game available for free.
On June 20 2017 03:06 imp42 wrote: Although it has been a bit quiet lately, we've been very busy working on OpenBW.
Finally we have published all source code repositories and introduced a first version of the BW AI IDE. It contains a version of BWAPI compatible with OpenBW. That means, you can now develop and run Broodwar bots using free and open-source software on Linux. *
The source code Github repository is can be found here.
Happy coding!
* the only files that are NOT open-source are the 3 MPQ files from the original Broodwar. They are however free, since Blizzard made the original game available for free.
Hi, Chris Coxe, author of ZZZKBot here. Is there a project or instructions somewhere to help/explain how to set up some kind of tournament manager system/environment for running many headless concurrent games on Linux that uses OpenBW (i.e. similar function as StarcraftAITournamentManager but headless)? I noticed https://github.com/tscmoo/bwheadless but I haven't looked through the project very deeply and I'm wondering how to run multiple concurrent games on Linux without bots clobbering each others' data etc. Any idea what maximum frame rate is typically for a (headless) game for a OpenBW bot vs OpenBW bot on Linux, compared with, say, StarcraftAITournamentManager on Windows VMs? I prefer developing & running in Linux/WINE and I'd eventually like to eventually switch to Linux (sooner rather than later). If the frame rate is better, and if it's easy to test my bot against many other bots, and considering it's headless (so no need to wait for rendering and game menus/lobbies and game countdowns), this is even more reason why bot writers should consider switching to Linux. Thanks for these amazing projects!
Also, I would give anything to know how to learn the skills for how tscmoo wrote the game engine for OpenBW without any BW source code? I know how to examine MPQ files and read disassembly for EXEs/DLLs etc and I know a little about how BW's ISCRIPT and animation frames/sprites system works but how did he write the source code for the game engine and make it so identical to BW? Surely he didn't do it just by reading disassembly? Any tools/advice for how to do it? I've used disassemblers and decompilers before but was there an easier or different way than that? Is there a particular function that is the entry point for BW's game engine logic when a game starts? Which EXEs/DLLs/MPQs file? Any advice or reference material for how I would get started if I wanted to have a go myself?
If anyone has OpenBW + OpenBWAPI working correctly with bwapi.ini files would appreciate some help, my bwapi.ini file line for the map seems to be ignored (I'm currently working around it by hardcoding it into one of the OpenBWAPI files...)
On August 15 2017 23:34 Quatari wrote: Hi, Chris Coxe, author of ZZZKBot here. Is there a project or instructions somewhere to help/explain how to set up some kind of tournament manager system/environment for running many headless concurrent games on Linux that uses OpenBW (i.e. similar function as StarcraftAITournamentManager but headless)? I noticed https://github.com/tscmoo/bwheadless but I haven't looked through the project very deeply and I'm wondering how to run multiple concurrent games on Linux without bots clobbering each others' data etc. Any idea what maximum frame rate is typically for a (headless) game for a OpenBW bot vs OpenBW bot on Linux, compared with, say, StarcraftAITournamentManager on Windows VMs? I prefer developing & running in Linux/WINE and I'd eventually like to eventually switch to Linux (sooner rather than later). If the frame rate is better, and if it's easy to test my bot against many other bots, and considering it's headless (so no need to wait for rendering and game menus/lobbies and game countdowns), this is even more reason why bot writers should consider switching to Linux. Thanks for these amazing projects!
Also, I would give anything to know how to learn the skills for how tscmoo wrote the game engine for OpenBW without any BW source code? I know how to examine MPQ files and read disassembly for EXEs/DLLs etc and I know a little about how BW's ISCRIPT and animation frames/sprites system works but how did he write the source code for the game engine and make it so identical to BW? Surely he didn't do it just by reading disassembly? Any tools/advice for how to do it? I've used disassemblers and decompilers before but was there an easier or different way than that? Is there a particular function that is the entry point for BW's game engine logic when a game starts? Which EXEs/DLLs/MPQs file? Any advice or reference material for how I would get started if I wanted to have a go myself?
hey Chris
first of all, congratulations on winning CIG 2017!
the bwheadless project has been abandoned in favor of OpenBW. The OpenBW program can be executed in parallel as many times as you want (= as your hardware allows you to). Just remember that there is no integrated AI-opponent, so you will have to learn/play against yourself or other bots. If you go the OpenBW route then there is no need for WINE. The whole tool chain can be Linux based. And yes, it will definitely be faster than a Windows VM setup .
OpenBW was in fact created by reading disassembly. For advice on process / tools I recommend joining IRC #openbw and talk to tscmoo directly.
regarding the entry point when the game starts: check out BWAPIs AI Module Loader (the one on the OpenBW github) together with the OpenBW code. That should hopefully give you the pointers you want. The only original files needed are the MPQs, which contain only data (stats, images, sounds,..).
Thanks for the reply. When I have time, I'll look into the stuff you mentioned. tscmoo must secretly be a machine posing as a human if he is able to hand-write source code that easily just from eyeballing disassembly...
Another question - if WINE isn't used, presumably it means that you can't run bots on Linux that were built for the normal BWAPI (i.e. built for Windows)? Maybe it's a stupid question. What I would like ideally is to be able to get away from needing Windows OS to test my bot against existing bots like the vast majority of the AIIDE/CIG/SSCAIT bots. Thanks
On September 01 2017 05:52 Quatari wrote: [...] Another question - if WINE isn't used, presumably it means that you can't run bots on Linux that were built for the normal BWAPI (i.e. built for Windows)? Maybe it's a stupid question. What I would like ideally is to be able to get away from needing Windows OS to test my bot against existing bots like the vast majority of the AIIDE/CIG/SSCAIT bots. Thanks
you will have to compile the other bots yourself, which means you need their source and they have to be Linux compatible (the latter should be a non-issue).
My big goal is to eventually provide the complete development environment as a docker image to run out of the box...
"Because if they won't do it, we'll do it ourselves"
This line makes me a bit sad, because of hard work put in by yourselves, and people like tec27, who did so much to make Brood War accessible and modern, only to be usurped by Blizzard. I, however, think that fan-made interface stuff like Chaoslauncher and MCAlauncher are superior to what Blizzard has put forth for SC:R.
Does BWopen have the ability to follow the player's camera during replays? Also, I remember a Build Order coach that Brood war once had waaaay back then. Blizz might have completed the HD stuff, but we still want a bunch of other things.
Yeah, Blizzard are slow to implement all the features we want! We want a combined openbw-mca-shieldbattery launcher for SC:R! :D In all seriousness though, I wonder if Blizzard will eventually get around to everything we want and if launchers will show up once again at some point. I imagine they will, and I imagine most devs at this point are waiting it out, to see what'll happen, and when is it reasonable to start contributing again.
On September 24 2017 08:05 ninazerg wrote: "Because if they won't do it, we'll do it ourselves"
This line makes me a bit sad, because of hard work put in by yourselves, and people like tec27, who did so much to make Brood War accessible and modern, only to be usurped by Blizzard. I, however, think that fan-made interface stuff like Chaoslauncher and MCAlauncher are superior to what Blizzard has put forth for SC:R.
On October 01 2017 18:33 Akara12345 wrote: Did Blizzard even contact you?
Nope. OpenBW might have been mentioned in the context of a discussion between the BWAPI project and Blizzard. But we've never been approached by Blizzard.
On September 01 2017 05:52 Quatari wrote: Thanks for the reply. When I have time, I'll look into the stuff you mentioned. tscmoo must secretly be a machine posing as a human if he is able to hand-write source code that easily just from eyeballing disassembly...
Another question - if WINE isn't used, presumably it means that you can't run bots on Linux that were built for the normal BWAPI (i.e. built for Windows)? Maybe it's a stupid question. What I would like ideally is to be able to get away from needing Windows OS to test my bot against existing bots like the vast majority of the AIIDE/CIG/SSCAIT bots. Thanks
Quatari, you launched BWAPI via WINE earlier, didnt you? Succesful? I make thousand and one tries, different methods.. but. Also, I compiled BWAPILAuncher for Linux, put 3 files but its just wait in console.. Some days dedicated to solve this question ( Could you share your experience?)
On November 08 2017 18:59 yanezz wrote: Guys, how to start OpenBW via BWAPILauncher on Linux? I made step-by-step from manual, start in console but no happens
I hope this has been resolved via email or chat, but in case someone else wonders:
the most common error so far are missing or invalid bwapi.ini files. get one from BWAPI, we will include an example bwapi.ini in our repository as well in the future.
Here is a screenshot of all required files in the bin-folder:
On November 13 2017 22:23 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: guys remastered replays works here?
No, unfortunately the replay format has changed with SC:R. Note that the gameplay is slightly different too, due to dragoon and valkyrie fixes. Therefore, even if the replay format was the same the game might desync.
On another note: We do support up to 8 player replays now for 1.16.1
As i remember and know, Dragoon has been half fixed, becouse stop bug had two reasons, one was a animation bug (inside animation), and second is "chasing target" bug with exist for every ranged unit but becouse of long animation shot mostly times u can see it on Goons anyway. Finaly 1st problem has been fixed, second not becouse of probably to big impact for engine.
On November 13 2017 22:23 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: guys remastered replays works here?
No, unfortunately the replay format has changed with SC:R. Note that the gameplay is slightly different too, due to dragoon and valkyrie fixes. Therefore, even if the replay format was the same the game might desync.
On another note: We do support up to 8 player replays now for 1.16.1
Will team melee replays be supported, or is that not possible?
On November 21 2017 07:48 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: lol they didnt fix dragoon or valks :D
I refer to the patch notes at wiki.teamliquid.net, section Patch 1.18.0 PTR A:
Valkyries will fire missiles regardless of population size Dragoons will not freeze and require a Stop order before accepting new orders
even these tiny changes could mess up a replay considerably. Imagine a unit dying from an additional valkyrie bullet that otherwise would not have been there or an additional dragoon participating in the fight that otherwise would have been stuck somewhere.
On November 22 2017 00:40 Vitlich wrote: Well freezing dragoon happend to me few times in remaster, and just like in 1.16 - without tripple hold comand it won't move.
I've carefully read through all the patch notes up to 1.20 and these two seem to be the only changes actually affecting game play. Is it possible they didn't make it from PTR into the production version?
On November 13 2017 22:23 [sc1f]eonzerg wrote: guys remastered replays works here?
No, unfortunately the replay format has changed with SC:R. Note that the gameplay is slightly different too, due to dragoon and valkyrie fixes. Therefore, even if the replay format was the same the game might desync.
On another note: We do support up to 8 player replays now for 1.16.1
Will team melee replays be supported, or is that not possible?
The OpenBW engine is currently not capable of playing out team games. The reason is just a matter of priority.
On November 29 2017 15:03 jimminy_kriket wrote: imp are you aware that starlog.gg has implemented your browser based replay viewer?
[...]
No, I wasn't aware of that. Their developer did visit us on IRC briefly and talked about the new replay format. I assume he's trying to get SC:R replays to work.
Citing OpenBW would be appreciated I guess, especially since the replay viewer doesn't come with a license (yet), although its source is published on our github.
Last month, there was an Human vs AI competition in Korea. https://starlog.gg/replay_viewer/ This page is only used to predict the game style of AI player tscmoo.
Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
You would need to rename the units and create new artwork for them, kind of like how dota 2 had to do.
Marine is okay, battlecruiser is okay, zergling is most likely copyrighted.
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
You would need to rename the units and create new artwork for them, kind of like how dota 2 had to do.
Marine is okay, battlecruiser is okay, zergling is most likely copyrighted.
I wouldn't mind the renaming honestly, as long as the scene stays healthy. I'm thinking all that money Afreeca is giving to Blizzard could easily fund this project to it's completion.
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
You would need to rename the units and create new artwork for them, kind of like how dota 2 had to do.
Marine is okay, battlecruiser is okay, zergling is most likely copyrighted.
I wouldn't mind the renaming honestly, as long as the scene stays healthy. I'm thinking all that money Afreeca is giving to Blizzard could easily fund this project to it's completion.
You also need to recode all of the bugs, you can't just use Blizzard files you use to run openbw because those are the property of Blizzard.
It's literally a multi-million dollar project to actually code a new game.
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
You would need to rename the units and create new artwork for them, kind of like how dota 2 had to do.
Marine is okay, battlecruiser is okay, zergling is most likely copyrighted.
I wouldn't mind the renaming honestly, as long as the scene stays healthy. I'm thinking all that money Afreeca is giving to Blizzard could easily fund this project to it's completion.
You also need to recode all of the bugs, you can't just use Blizzard files you use to run openbw because those are the property of Blizzard.
It's literally a multi-million dollar project to actually code a new game.
I mean, it can be. There's indie products, good ones, that cost very little money to develop.
I’d like OpenBW to finish, if you guys can still work on this. Any crowdfund? It’s time for a community that’s between 20-40 and that have decent jobs to show what desire and hard work can do over greed. Anybody can use their public relations to organize this?
openbw is a pipe dream. stop thinking that openbw is a realistic solution. it'll be worse than vietnam in terms of being a quagmire. not just in terms of IP legal issues, but replicating the game itself is a gargantuan task. I can see it coming out, in five plus years.
There are better battlefields we can fight on. Allocating our already scant resources towards openbw will just lead to painful disappointment.
On January 21 2018 15:44 Golgotha wrote: openbw is a pipe dream. stop thinking that openbw is a realistic solution. it'll be worse than vietnam in terms of being a quagmire. not just in terms of IP legal issues, but replicating the game itself is a gargantuan task. I can see it coming out, in five plus years.
There are better battlefields we can fight on. Allocating our already scant resources towards openbw will just lead to painful disappointment.
If this is even remotely possible i assume Afreeca would gladly jump on board. No longer leaving our resources as scant. If i recall correctly the game engine is already completely rewritten by these guys, but i am just speaking from memory. That is why we need imp's word on this.
What’s really obvious is that we deserve a company that has BroodWar as their main focus so the game can be at its best(anyone remember Dota2?) Without bashing Blizzard: They already have WoW, Heartstone, Overwatch, HotS and even SC2 as their main focus and source of revenue. Has anyone seen how SC2 is growing since “free to play”? It’s growing in players like crazy as game population has doubled, which is awesome, but for us Broodwar is the best thing ever, and it is what we want. Someone else that is 100% commited should take on from here.
We should get all the programmers and artists on TL together and fully remake BW with different assets/sounds and give it to afreeca so we dont have to deal with blizzard anymore....
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
You would need to rename the units and create new artwork for them, kind of like how dota 2 had to do.
Marine is okay, battlecruiser is okay, zergling is most likely copyrighted.
I wouldn't mind the renaming honestly, as long as the scene stays healthy. I'm thinking all that money Afreeca is giving to Blizzard could easily fund this project to it's completion.
You also need to recode all of the bugs, you can't just use Blizzard files you use to run openbw because those are the property of Blizzard.
It's literally a multi-million dollar project to actually code a new game.
I mean, it can be. There's indie products, good ones, that cost very little money to develop.
Progamers won't accept a game that is not 100% compatible with the current one. If the scourge are too smart, it's RIP corsairs, everyone will mass muta.
An indie product is usually not well-polished, it's just an idea that is fun for a single player game. What indie games have been enduring multi-player successes?
guys the unit behavior and all bugs are already 100 percent implemented and compatible with 1.16. Scourge aren't too smart. Would of course have to code UI and input and that's nothing to sneeze at but everyone moaning about unit behavior is way off the mark
On January 21 2018 15:44 Golgotha wrote: openbw is a pipe dream. stop thinking that openbw is a realistic solution. it'll be worse than vietnam in terms of being a quagmire. not just in terms of IP legal issues, but replicating the game itself is a gargantuan task. I can see it coming out, in five plus years.
There are better battlefields we can fight on. Allocating our already scant resources towards openbw will just lead to painful disappointment.
On January 24 2018 12:52 ninazerg wrote: I support this, but I think Blizzard would pull a lawsuit to block this, unfortunately.
I have no idea what the law says. For sure there are differences between different countries. But I've seen lots of mobile games on google play store being almost exact copies of another one, some which even have really similar graphics compared to original one. So if open openBW code is made from scratch and has fan made graphics, could Blizzards lawyer army even say anything?
On January 24 2018 12:52 ninazerg wrote: I support this, but I think Blizzard would pull a lawsuit to block this, unfortunately.
So if open openBW code is made from scratch and has fan made graphics, could Blizzards lawyer army even say anything?
If it looks like Coca-Cola/an iPhone and if it sells because of it (or it's appeal is mainly the likeness) then yes, it's definitely not legal, regardless of the fact that you 'made' it or own the technology/IP of the bits and pieces required to imitate it. Even if you don't sell it but give it away for free, it can reasonably hurt the brand. Star Trek franchising/licensing for fan projects used to be a good example for anything goes, but they went back on that hard -- iirc because of 'possibly hurting' the new universe films commercially.
Likely it's not that different in SKorea. Whoever @Blizzard_Ent is making it harder for SC:BW tournaments in Korea to be a thing (because of licensing) likely is the same branch of the company that would block, say, big OpenBW tournaments in the US. With a vengeance.
On January 24 2018 12:52 ninazerg wrote: I support this, but I think Blizzard would pull a lawsuit to block this, unfortunately.
I have no idea what the law says. For sure there are differences between different countries. But I've seen lots of mobile games on google play store being almost exact copies of another one, some which even have really similar graphics compared to original one. So if open openBW code is made from scratch and has fan made graphics, could Blizzards lawyer army even say anything?
Blizzard could drown them just in lawyer cost. They can afford dozens/hundreds of thousands of collars of lawyer costs. I highly doubt the OpenBW team can.
I wonder how much money would Blizzard honestly demand to let Starcraft become public domain. Let them name the final time price, and we crowdfund it. :p
On January 24 2018 12:52 ninazerg wrote: I support this, but I think Blizzard would pull a lawsuit to block this, unfortunately.
So if open openBW code is made from scratch and has fan made graphics, could Blizzards lawyer army even say anything?
If it looks like Coca-Cola/an iPhone and if it sells because of it (or it's appeal is mainly the likeness) then yes, it's definitely not legal, regardless of the fact that you 'made' it or own the technology/IP of the bits and pieces required to imitate it. Even if you don't sell it but give it away for free, it can reasonably hurt the brand. Star Trek franchising/licensing for fan projects used to be a good example for anything goes, but they went back on that hard -- iirc because of 'possibly hurting' the new universe films commercially.
Likely it's not that different in SKorea. Whoever @Blizzard_Ent is making it harder for SC:BW tournaments in Korea to be a thing (because of licensing) likely is the same branch of the company that would block, say, big OpenBW tournaments in the US. With a vengeance.
You cut out the part of the quote that was the reason why I was asking the question. Are you sure the law is interpret the same way in video game industry? Obviously openBW is not using StarCraft trademark or copying their story.
On January 24 2018 12:52 ninazerg wrote: I support this, but I think Blizzard would pull a lawsuit to block this, unfortunately.
I have no idea what the law says. For sure there are differences between different countries. But I've seen lots of mobile games on google play store being almost exact copies of another one, some which even have really similar graphics compared to original one. So if open openBW code is made from scratch and has fan made graphics, could Blizzards lawyer army even say anything?
Blizzard could drown them just in lawyer cost. They can afford dozens/hundreds of thousands of collars of lawyer costs. I highly doubt the OpenBW team can.
Haha yeah most likely, unless there are example cases already where the copy cat won.
On January 24 2018 21:10 niteReloaded wrote: How long before copyright expires? :p
I wonder how much money would Blizzard honestly demand to let Starcraft become public domain. Let them name the final time price, and we crowdfund it. :p
Well sc2 still makes cash via lootboxes. Maybe there is some way to only make Starcraft 1 public domain and let blizzard keep SC2 and an option for any future starcraft games. I'm super down for that crowdfunding campaign.
On January 24 2018 19:10 dicey wrote: If it looks like Coca-Cola/an iPhone and if it sells because of it (or it's appeal is mainly the likeness) then yes, it's definitely not legal, regardless of the fact that you 'made' it or own the technology/IP of the bits and pieces required to imitate it. Even if you don't sell it but give it away for free, it can reasonably hurt the brand. Star Trek franchising/licensing for fan projects used to be a good example for anything goes, but they went back on that hard -- iirc because of 'possibly hurting' the new universe films commercially.
Likely it's not that different in SKorea. Whoever @Blizzard_Ent is making it harder for SC:BW tournaments in Korea to be a thing (because of licensing) likely is the same branch of the company that would block, say, big OpenBW tournaments in the US. With a vengeance.
You cut out the part of the quote that was the reason why I was asking the question. Are you sure the law is interpret the same way in video game industry? Obviously openBW is not using StarCraft trademark or copying their story.
Because I wasn't replying to that.
Probably in servicing/digital products licensing and trademarks (relative to revenue, that is) is probably even stricter than for industrial or physical consumer products. So no doubt it applies to OpenBW if they were to commercialise or get any media attention, as goes with sponsors, from big tournaments (likely easy to argue in court for protecting brand against costly control of IP infringement, or because data can be sold or made money from easily). If it looks like BW and if it plays like BW and if it attracts attention like BW (away from SC2 or official BW more than anything), it's surely a problem for trademarking/copyright. Everywhere but in banana republics, China and Eastern Europe at least.
You can't just cite legal issues with Star Trek fan productions to compare to OpenBW. It's 2 different pair of shoes.
Yes it is illegal to distribute (for money or for free) a completely 100% selfmade picture of the millenium falcon for example. It is 100% not illegal to distribute a pen that you can draw a millenium falcon with or instructions how to do it.
So yes it is illegal to distribute high quality redraws of a Zergling for example. But it is not illegal to distribute a BroodWar emulator (OpenBW) that uses the legally optained graphics from your BroodWar install. Just like it is not illegal to distribute a SNES Emulator but it is illegal to distribute Super Mario World roms.
So the workaround for high quality graphics in OpenBW is very simple. You need to make a converter application that requires you to have the original graphics which you use as an input and then you convert that to a high quality graphic. If you don't have the legally optained original graphics the converter program is useless and therefor doesn't violate any copyright. This is very similar to converting your CD to an MP3 or (for the older guys :D) using a special vinyl record player to create a file your media player can play. Not illegal to create such a record player or to make a program like AudioGrabber.
OpenBW might have a problem with the name because Blizzard has the right for BroodWar so maybe the project just needs to be renamed to FYB (i think you can decypher that yourself :D).
P.S. This applies not just to distribution, using copyrighted material for promotion is handled in a similar way but irrelevant for OpenBW.
On January 24 2018 19:18 Superouman wrote: Blizzard could drown them just in lawyer cost. They can afford dozens/hundreds of thousands of collars of lawyer costs. I highly doubt the OpenBW team can.
Blizzard could, but it would cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. If they had a weak case suing wouldn't be a good business decision.
That said...
On January 25 2018 00:48 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: You can't just cite legal issues with Star Trek fan productions to compare to OpenBW. It's 2 different pair of shoes.
Yes it is illegal to distribute (for money or for free) a completely 100% selfmade picture of the millenium falcon for example. It is 100% not illegal to distribute a pen that you can draw a millenium falcon with or instructions how to do it.
So yes it is illegal to distribute high quality redraws of a Zergling for example. But it is not illegal to distribute a BroodWar emulator (OpenBW) that uses the legally optained graphics from your BroodWar install. Just like it is not illegal to distribute a SNES Emulator but it is illegal to distribute Super Mario World roms.
So the workaround for high quality graphics in OpenBW is very simple. You need to make a converter application that requires you to have the original graphics which you use as an input and then you convert that to a high quality graphic. If you don't have the legally optained original graphics the converter program is useless and therefor doesn't violate any copyright. This is very similar to converting your CD to an MP3 or (for the older guys :D) using a special vinyl record player to create a file your media player can play. Not illegal to create such a record player or to make a program like AudioGrabber.
What seems common sense to us isn't necessary how the law works or what makes a case weak or strong.
On January 12 2018 05:22 dark.matter wrote: Any updates on AI IDE? I'm on a Mac now and can't fool around with BWAPI really, would prefer a simple setup.
Several people are using OpenBW to develop their bots now. You have the option to either code in c++ or Java for now. As far as I know there are people developing wrappers for other languages as well.
We're still thinking of dockerizing everything to make it easier to use. Also, BWAPI5 is in the works. OpenBW will be officially supported as a backend alternative to the original game.
On January 21 2018 05:21 friendbg wrote: Imp, are you guys still developing the project? If openbw doesn't violate any Blizzard intelectual properties, wouldn't it be possible to reach out to afreeca and replace SCR altogether? It is really frustrating having to "beg" blizzard for permission about every tournament.
yes, we're still on it, although we had a strong focus on AI bots. Networking and UI are still missing, so it can't be played by humans yet. Reaching out to afreeca at some point is definitely tempting, but I'm afraid we would have to change the graphics (and sound!) in order to be completely independent of Blizzard and avoid any legal issues. Such a redesign is obviously a large project by itself. Our OpenBW HD came to a complete halt when SC:R was announced.
On January 21 2018 06:50 iopq wrote: You also need to recode all of the bugs, you can't just use Blizzard files you use to run openbw because those are the property of Blizzard.
It's literally a multi-million dollar project to actually code a new game.
The functionality / game mechanics are not an issue. The core engine is 100% compatible with the original game. Every single 'bug' and feature is replicated. The blizzard files are only required for graphics and sound.
On January 21 2018 09:20 allhenryros wrote: I’d like OpenBW to finish, if you guys can still work on this. Any crowdfund? It’s time for a community that’s between 20-40 and that have decent jobs to show what desire and hard work can do over greed. Anybody can use their public relations to organize this?
crowdfunding would only make sense if tscmoo can guarantee dedicated development time. At the moment he's very busy, but it's certainly a topic we could discuss. Regarding community contributions: I think the code base / repository is ready now to accept contributions from other community members. That is, if somebody wants to code a user interface for OpenBW, it can be done.
On January 21 2018 15:44 Golgotha wrote: openbw is a pipe dream. stop thinking that openbw is a realistic solution. it'll be worse than vietnam in terms of being a quagmire. not just in terms of IP legal issues, but replicating the game itself is a gargantuan task. I can see it coming out, in five plus years.
There are better battlefields we can fight on. Allocating our already scant resources towards openbw will just lead to painful disappointment.
All I can say is bots are already playing on OpenBW and we are looking into migrating from original to OpenBW for tournaments. So we're already half-way there I'd say.
On January 21 2018 16:28 friendbg wrote: [...] If i recall correctly the game engine is already completely rewritten by these guys, but i am just speaking from memory. That is why we need imp's word on this.
yes, the game engine ("core engine", no networking, no UI) is working fine. It is used both to play bot games as well as replay games in the replay viewer.
Thank you OpenBW for appearing and giving signs of life,... unlike Blizzard. You can be sure that whatever you decide and ask for on behalf of the community, you will have support.
How is this not the same way of linking, on a side-note? People arguing that other people can hurt their general IP [in the future]. Rest are technicalities.
On January 25 2018 00:48 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: So yes it is illegal to distribute high quality redraws of a Zergling for example. But it is not illegal to distribute a BroodWar emulator (OpenBW) that uses the legally optained graphics from your BroodWar install.
Obviously. The parts, as I argued, you can draw and do however way you please. If the result however looks (to judge&jury at the very least) too similar you will have a problem.
Regarding to what I was talking about: * a) monetisation of something obviously done in all likeness of an IP, be it directly as a product, or promoting it via big tournaments *b) is there enough incentive to actually 'go after' it legally.
On January 25 2018 00:48 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: Just like it is not illegal to distribute a SNES Emulator but it is illegal to distribute Super Mario World roms. This is very similar to converting your CD to an MP3 or (for the older guys :D) using a special vinyl record player to create a file your media player can play.
Yeah, it's not illegal to do a magnet-file resolver or a torrent application, or using it without infringing on IP. Encouraging people to do this especially for one product-lookalike and -- the problematic thing about a big tournament -- doing it collectively is something different all together. Yes you can 'torrent' your own torrent-file of a ripped CD (preferably password protected version of it) but anything else doubtfully is ok. So I'd say, with the risk of voicing the unpopular a) yes, very problematic, and b) possibly the case, if anything than 'emulation' is done: Especially seeing it at Activision|Blizzard IP and that they are publicly traded.
In a copyright climate where Nintendo can force videos (of their games being played) out of youtube, or where grumpy cat meme coffee gets 700k plus change in courts, don't live the illusion that, another analogy, if you are able to print a label in a better/another way than brand X's label, you have created something brand X won't basically fight you for, if you are too uppity about it. So might be worth writing a disclaimer into OpenBW if that's not already the case. Edit: brackets
On January 24 2018 19:10 dicey wrote: If it looks like Coca-Cola/an iPhone and if it sells because of it (or it's appeal is mainly the likeness) then yes, it's definitely not legal, regardless of the fact that you 'made' it or own the technology/IP of the bits and pieces required to imitate it. Even if you don't sell it but give it away for free, it can reasonably hurt the brand. Star Trek franchising/licensing for fan projects used to be a good example for anything goes, but they went back on that hard -- iirc because of 'possibly hurting' the new universe films commercially.
Likely it's not that different in SKorea. Whoever @Blizzard_Ent is making it harder for SC:BW tournaments in Korea to be a thing (because of licensing) likely is the same branch of the company that would block, say, big OpenBW tournaments in the US. With a vengeance.
You cut out the part of the quote that was the reason why I was asking the question. Are you sure the law is interpret the same way in video game industry? Obviously openBW is not using StarCraft trademark or copying their story.
Because I wasn't replying to that.
Probably in servicing/digital products licensing and trademarks (relative to revenue, that is) is probably even stricter than for industrial or physical consumer products. So no doubt it applies to OpenBW if they were to commercialise or get any media attention, as goes with sponsors, from big tournaments (likely easy to argue in court for protecting brand against costly control of IP infringement, or because data can be sold or made money from easily). If it looks like BW and if it plays like BW and if it attracts attention like BW (away from SC2 or official BW more than anything), it's surely a problem for trademarking/copyright. Everywhere but in banana republics, China and Eastern Europe at least.
You seem not to be too sure yourself either tho I think you are just guessing like I am.
I was under the impression that openBW was going to be a free game, not sold commercially. If the unexpected would happen and openBW project would be finished one day and Afreeca would want to host an openBW tournament instead of StarCraft remastered to avoid fees, it would not even be the game developers that would benefit from it. But for sure that would be counted as commercial use..
The Star Trek case you're referring to is not quite the same as the fan pages used straight out copyrighted film clips, sounds, insignia, or other copyrighted material. And anyways the case is 12 years old, the law might me interpret differently nowdays as the industry has developed quite a lot since 1996. edit: 22 years old
At least couple years ago when I used googles/apples stores, I saw a lot of clone games sold that even had extremely resembling graphics compared to the original games and I don't live in the "banana republics". One thing I know, game mechanics cannot be copyrighted even in US. Some mechanics could be patented but those expires with time. So even if a game plays like broodwar, it does not violate any copyright or trademark laws. Straight out copying source code is a different matter.
I don't think there there is a clear law on copying characters from other games either. I did some digging and found out this triangle lawsuit where a Chinese game company Lilith gaming sued North Californian uCool that had published pretty much an exact copy of their game.
Here is a link to a screenshots of both games: top=Soul Clash from Lilith, below= Heroes Charge from uCool Both games were sold commercially and the Californian clone game was in top 20 grossing app during the time on iOs. I read some of the US ditrict court papers from justia.com and seems that they had even copied the source code, later converting it to different language. Game mechanics were exactly the same. There was even found Lilith games' hidden copyright mark in a pop-up from the source code in one of the versions of the game that uCool copied and distributed.
Soon after third party got involved and sued both Lilith games and uCool for copyright infringement as dozens of their game characters resembled night elves, tauren, and pandarenthe from Warcraft / dota. Basically they were 2D-copies of warcraft characters. And yes, the third gaming company involved was of course Blizzard! But not Blizzard alone, but Blizzard and Valve. Apparently these characters were used both in warcraft world and dota 2?
The court dismissed Blizzard/Valve's lawsuit as they "failed to state a valid claim for copyright infringement".
I don't know if Blizzard and Valve ever fixed their claim to file a new suit. Also if I understood right, the fact that original dota was fanmade also effected the case.
The cases were filed at 2015 and I don't know if they're still ongoing. What I know is that US district court denied the Lilith's motion for preliminary injunction back in 2015 and you can still find the game from AppStore and Google play: http://hc.ucool.com/
I'm sure there are still dozens of other clone games as well, I don't use either of those app stores anymore but at least that used to be the case.
So what do you think? Maybe the laws are not as straight forward as one might think.
On January 25 2018 05:32 Piste wrote:PS. Star Trek is awesome
No disagreement there =p Also feel like I'm in a conspiracy to derail this thread, sorry, maybe discuss in another forum?
I was talking about the 2015 federal lawsuit in the later part and that they pulled abstract stuff like "likeness" and copyrighted "themes". As Blizzard has a writing staff and the lore likely is copyrighted, the same could be said about the characters, i.e. units in the SC franchise. I guess they settled out of court (which I have personally had to do once too because of alleged IP infringement (WB)), and I'm no expert, no (I can't tell you where to best file a suit to get the highest probabiliy of a copyright-friendly judge, but Activision Blizzard likely does) -- I just hope OpenBW or tournament organisers give the whole thing a good deal of thought. As I said above, it's a lot about incentive to even go into the trouble. But the basis of why I lean the way I do about this is on page 19 of the filing you posted "A video game copyright protects all of the copyrightable elements of that game", let alone the franchise, backstory, maps&editor. Plus the games are extremely dissimilar to Dota&WoW so barely worth the comparison.
I am not using "common sense", this is how you argue a case.
The difference is if the "thing" you distribute is copyrighted or not.
So when you use OpenBW and create a tournament and you broadcast it (to make this easier to argue but works anyway). You distribute copyrighted material. The images of the Zergling, eventhough created with the non copyrighted OpenBW, are copyrighted by Blizzard.
You can then compare this to the case of "fan productions". To make a fan production you use for example a pen and you draw the "Starship Enterprise". All perfectly fine no problem there, you used a legal tool (pen) and changed how you see the paper by putting paint on it. No problem selling the pen, so problem seeing a copyrighted image.
The difference again is when you distribute this drawing of the "Starship Enterprise".
The point is that you can only be a sink for copyrighted material and not a source.
So to get back to a potential tournament with OpenBW. Yes you can do this, so long as every participant brings his own copy of BroodWar to play. Because again, the difference is the distribution of copyrighted material. If you let others play your copy of BroodWar you were the source and not the sink of it. Doesn't matter if it's for money or not.
Now BroodWar is a special case, because it was sold allowing you to make "spawn installs". This was a selling point way back in the days before fucking lootboxes. It means you can buy 1 copy of StarCraft and install it on 8 computers to play in a LAN. StarCraft was the most copied game back in the day because it had absolutely no copy protection on the disk. Mind you, this is not part of the "spawn install" and violated Blizzards copyright. But it definitely helped StarCrafts popularity a lot. So technically you could make a case to allow tournaments where not every player has to have a copy. But this depends on the license comming with the patch you play on. I don't know when they removed spawn install.
So if Blizzard wants to shut down OpenBW I gladly host it from one of my servers because where I'm from this most definitely isn't a violation of copyright. As always, laws change over time and soon there will be a change where I'm from. This change wants to crack down harder on copyright violations (called differently) and ensures that the sink of the whole transaction (you the enduser) is excluded. So if you're the enduser of copyrighted material you're not doing anything illegal. This can be watching a movie on some sketchy stream page or watching a stream of an OpenBW tournament. It's a clear distinction between source and sink that defines copyright law in most of europe.
On January 26 2018 06:50 WhuazGoodJaggah wrote: The difference is if the "thing" you distribute is copyrighted or not.
So when you use OpenBW and create a tournament and you broadcast it (to make this easier to argue but works anyway). You distribute copyrighted material. The images of the Zergling, eventhough created with the non copyrighted OpenBW, are copyrighted by Blizzard.
So why not stop there with the argument? Legality seems 'clear'. Emulator or not, the TOS prohibits modifying&redistributing. Having a copy (who keeps receipts for that long...) of BW won't change that. Of course it's technically hard to argue who authored (cf 2nd paragraph) and who copied what exactly. Much of my point was to say that if it gets media attention it will also draw Activision_Blizz legal attention and possibly seize and desists. Arguably, stopping the WoW vanilla clone (see Nostalrius) took so long because those guys weren't in the US -- and now moved the server, including a playerbase of a few 100,000s, to Russia.
Update: in the "Afreecatv CEO" thread this was posted, which compares the IP to re-enacting a theatre play. Even with a licence the IP holder could shut you down at any time. Also there's likely a distinction on copyright on the code vs. trademark protection for IP/franchise.
After watching awesome Sziky vs Dewalt games i think good idea for OpenBW and Blizzard will be to adds storms counter. Probally i will add this feautre for 1.16. Just for watching old replays.
On April 21 2018 20:15 sunvssky wrote: Is it under development?
and
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
Not that I’m a coder or developer or anything, but isn’t java pretty much dead?
On April 21 2018 20:15 sunvssky wrote: Is it under development?
and
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
Not that I’m a coder or developer or anything, but isn’t java pretty much dead?
Java is overall the biggest programming language on Earth and will be for a very very long time in the future.
On April 21 2018 20:15 sunvssky wrote: Is it under development?
and
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
Not that I’m a coder or developer or anything, but isn’t java pretty much dead?
Java is overall the biggest programming language on Earth and will be for a very very long time in the future.
On April 21 2018 20:15 sunvssky wrote: Is it under development?
and
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
Not that I’m a coder or developer or anything, but isn’t java pretty much dead?
Java is overall the biggest programming language on Earth and will be for a very very long time in the future.
#opinions
but yes Java is not dead at all xd
Okay good to know. I thought it was being phased out and overall was slow/clunky. Guess I was wrong. Thanks for the info!
On April 21 2018 20:15 sunvssky wrote: Is it under development?
and
On April 22 2018 04:16 Lazare1969 wrote: you can see the commit rate https://github.com/OpenBW ; what you see is what you get
the most activity you can see is some guy making some java thing
The OpenBW core engine is currently just receiving sporadic minor improvements, since it is pretty much complete. As Lazare1969 wrote, we're about to release a new Java wrapper which works well with OpenBW. Although its primary target is the bot development community it could also be used to develop a GUI for OpenBW such that humans can play.
Furthermore we've released a first dockerized version of OpenBW.
Whether Java or c++: At the current state, anyone can contribute a GUI. It's likely rather easy to get something usable with reasonable effort, especially if you just start with implementing all the keyboard shortcuts (nobody semi-serious is clicking on the command icons anyways). The most difficult task might be unit prioritization when a user boxes more than 12 units: Which 12 units make it into the control group?
Not that I’m a coder or developer or anything, but isn’t java pretty much dead?
Java is overall the biggest programming language on Earth and will be for a very very long time in the future.
#opinions
but yes Java is not dead at all xd
It's not an opinion, it's a fact. Sure, you can look at it in different ways and you'll see that there are many other languages being used out there, some quite a bit more depending on the area you're aiming at but OVERALL, there is no question about it, Java and Javascript represent a huge piece of the puzzle.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.openbw.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/OpenBW_Header.png)
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It will just add pixels in between the current ones, estimating the color of that new pixel to be a mixture of the pixels surrounding it (roughly said) and thus leading to a blurry image with no real sharp edges.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UTv6xeD.png)
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