Little things you hate about Brood War?

Pr0nogo

United States207 Posts

September 08 2023 17:39 GMT

I posted this on the BW subreddit but figured I'd probably get higher-quality answers on here!

I'm firmly of the belief that Brood War is the greatest RTS game ever released, but there are a lot of obvious things that, in my view, would make the game better if they were different - mostly so that high-skill players could focus their attention on more interesting interactions.

One answer I have for the title is: that you can't build over your own units (or allied units in team games). Obviously this isn't as big of a problem when you're building generally, but having to micromanage your decolliding workers out of the way when you want to build Missile Turrets or Photon Cannons seems pretty unnecessary. (I tested without it and it was surprisingly intuitive!)

I'm working on a pretty sizable overhaul of the game, and wanted to know if there were small quirks that bother people in the same way. We've already resolved a lot of them (and the game is very different than BW now, anyways), but maybe there are some suggestions people have that could be worked into the project. And regardless of my work, I thought it could be an interesting discussion point!

What say you all? (inb4 Dragoons and ramps)

Nirli

Bulgaria148 Posts

September 08 2023 18:53 GMT

Been following this for some time now, nice ideas and interesting changes to stuff like pathing.

My main annoyance is wrist hurting from literally gaming all my life and being unable to play BW at all. What's the fix doc?

(Playing Protoss isn't an option.)

WGT-Baal

France2962 Posts

September 08 2023 20:32 GMT

How terrible bnet is and the myriad of things that got worse, from latency to friend list, the join lobby bug (still there!) and the lack of 2v2 ladder that I will forever be salty about.

But for the game itself, all the little quirks make it the perfect game it is and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Best of luck with your project~

Elroi

Sweden5420 Posts

September 08 2023 20:51 GMT

They switched the uses of the left and right mouse button compared to Command and Conquer: Red Alert.

2Pacalypse-

Croatia9251 Posts

September 08 2023 21:15 GMT

Here's the list I made a while ago, as a wish list of things we wanted to address in some way on ShieldBattery: https://gist.github.com/2Pacalypse-/cd0e368adde17c2c9673

Some of these things were added in SC:R (e.g. unit limit), and some of these we already fixed on ShieldBattery (e.g. unit stacking bug), but I don't feel like updating the list at the moment to reflect my newest thinking.

iPlaY.NettleS

Australia4201 Posts

September 08 2023 21:32 GMT

Since most players are in Korea they complain about latency or just leave game within first 2 minutes because the game is TR 16 instead of 24 as they are used to.No new players coming through because game is so old.

No complaints about game itself.

pebble444

Italy2451 Posts

September 08 2023 21:46 GMT

It would be nice to see a video about how this is working at the moment; seems like a very ambitious project but also seems that you guys are working hard at it; the foreign bw community never ceases to surprise me

Yorbon

Netherlands4272 Posts

September 09 2023 01:10 GMT

UI and Blizzard, the game itself is near perfect.

XenOsky

Chile2076 Posts

September 09 2023 02:16 GMT

the players...

Poegim

Poland259 Posts

September 09 2023 05:43 GMT

#10

Remastering game with can now be playable in 500fps but keeping 8fps animations so game is not smooth anyway.

No 2v2 ladder as final nail in coffin.

kidcrash

United States615 Posts

September 09 2023 06:35 GMT

#11

Always wanted one more additional F key for locations.

prosatan

Romania6848 Posts

September 09 2023 06:36 GMT

#12

I hate when my goons, when they don't have range upgrade, are stepping right into spider mines even if there is an observer!!! Yessss, you can argue why there isnt range already upgraded when you have observer , but still !!

[sc1f]eonzerg

Belgium6243 Posts

September 09 2023 07:43 GMT

#13

I hate rallypoint in the mouse. Is so painful to see your drones dying to canons while multitasking with zerglings and ur rally point just changed.. I hate that 2 zerglings that are attacking a worker that is mining all of sudden of one them stop attacking that worker and change focus.There is something about workers going to get minerals and return that bug that out somehow.. And i also hate zerglings freeze while chasing a zealot. Painful.

United States2790 Posts

September 09 2023 07:44 GMT

#14

Goons and Medics freezing is annoying as hell. I also find it annoying that goons act more stupid when they're cloaked by arbiters. I've noticed that when Goons are cloaked by arbiters, even though they have vision and range, they will often walk to close to mines and trigger them before starting to attack them (something that almost never happens when not under an arbiter). I also think it's annoying that SCVs are always bouncing around when they're building and often blocking buildings, especially supply depots. I also find it annoying that for no reason at all, sometimes when I drop a dt out of a shuttle, the game bugs out and my opponent will get vision for a slight moment and my DT's take a bunch of damage. I hate that scouts cost so much and I hate how confusing it is in terms of what's a tight wall or not between all the different types of terrain and buildings and unit types. If I sat here for a while, I could probably come up with more but these are the ones that instantly come to mind.

Crimson)S(hadow

Philippines467 Posts

September 09 2023 08:52 GMT

#15

scouts need to come with speed upg already researched, then they'd probably a niche unit that gets normal use.

reasons: same ground DPS as wraith, but much higher cost. so why do they start off slow?
they cost more than a corsair, so why aren't they the same speed?

but as a zerg player, my life is probably more stress-free the way things are.

Cryoc

Germany908 Posts

September 09 2023 10:15 GMT

#16

I hate that they "fixed" the lost keyboard input at some point in remastered because they actually didn't fix it but made the behavior very unintuitive. Before remastered, when you 1a2a3a'ed and you for example pressed 2 before you released the left mouse button, you pressing 2 was simply not registered and you didn't select the 2nd control group. Now with the "fix" in the same scenario, the command you thought you issued to group 1 is now issued to group 2 instead which is more often than not very confusing. So now 2 groups of units are doing something unexpected instead of just one.

MaGic~PhiL

Germany7350 Posts

September 09 2023 12:01 GMT

#17

On September 09 2023 16:44 G5 wrote:
Goons and Medics freezing is annoying as hell. I also find it annoying that goons act more stupid when they're cloaked by arbiters. I've noticed that when Goons are cloaked by arbiters, even though they have vision and range, they will often walk to close to mines and trigger them before starting to attack them (something that almost never happens when not under an arbiter). I also think it's annoying that SCVs are always bouncing around when they're building and often blocking buildings, especially supply depots. I also find it annoying that for no reason at all, sometimes when I drop a dt out of a shuttle, the game bugs out and my opponent will get vision for a slight moment and my DT's take a bunch of damage. I hate that scouts cost so much and I hate how confusing it is in terms of what's a tight wall or not between all the different types of terrain and buildings and unit types. If I sat here for a while, I could probably come up with more but these are the ones that instantly come to mind.

What? I cant even begin to understand why that could be? Not saying I dont believe you.. but wtf D=

Pr0nogo

United States207 Posts

September 09 2023 17:10 GMT

#18

Thanks everyone for the neat responses!

On September 09 2023 03:53 Nirli wrote:
My main annoyance is wrist hurting from literally gaming all my life and being unable to play BW at all. What's the fix doc?

That's terrible. I've been following the stretches in this video for years - maybe they can offer you some relief and eventually help you! I would also recommend compression gloves/sleeves depending on the location of the pain, especially if it's getting to the point that you can't play without discomfort. Anything beyond that is a bit above my familiarity, but I'm wishing you well!

On September 09 2023 05:32 WGT-Baal wrote:
Best of luck with your project~

Thanks Baal! Brood War's quirks are definitely a huge lesson in intentional design - I feel like it's possible to make an even better game if you, as a designer, take ownership over every aspect of the game. Blizzard didn't do that, and instead accidentally made something great. I hope I'm not the only developer to actually learn from BW's example, so we can have more great RTS games in the future!

On September 09 2023 06:15 2Pacalypse- wrote:
Here's the list I made a while ago, as a wish list of things we wanted to address in some way on ShieldBattery: https://gist.github.com/2Pacalypse-/cd0e368adde17c2c9673

I love this list! As a bit of an exercise, I went through and sorted them based on their status in Cosmonarchy Brood War:
+ Show Spoiler +

Confirmed bugs:
- Unit freezing by issuing move command during an attack frame. -- Fixed
- Reavers refusing to shoot at certain angles, even though it's in range. -- Not applicable, unit was reworked
- Probes doing ring around the rosie between gateways while maynarding -- Fixed as far as I could tell
- Various limits -- Fixed
- Saving the game bugs out the replay most of the time. -- Fixed
- Keyboard commands don't register as long as a mousebutton is pressed down. -- Fixed
- Filename length limit in map and replay names, when hosting the game. -- Unchanged, low priority to fix
- Bug which allows units to be permanently stacked. -- Needs testing
- Interceptor infinite loop return -- Not applicable (Stewards no longer have shields; now return only when below an HP threshold)
- Certain tiles in the BroodWar Terrains are bugged, so you can't actually use them for maps. -- Fixed
- Pathfinding not searching all the alternative paths in certain conditions. -- Unchanged, probably quite hard to fix
- Setting a rally point with a pylon disables it -- Needs testing, but seems impossible now
- Terrain level bugs -- Fixed (there are many more that weren't in that link)

Not a bug, but annoying nonetheless:
- Pathfinding on ramps. -- Unchanged, same as the previous pathfinding case
- Diagonal movement of units can sometimes be weird. -- Unchanged, though we fixed all variable unit movement, so this might seem fixed/better/etc.
- The control-group-adding-when-full "bug". -- Not applicable, selection limit was increased to 252
- If the building is surrounded by all sides, it can't produce units prompting the message "Building exit is blocked". -- Fixed by making units spawn in the direction of rally points
- Setting a worker to mine on a mineral patch that's under the fog of war is a bit finicky. -- Unchanged, but should be looked into!
- Lifting a terran building deletes its current rally point, even after the building is landed back again. -- Unchanged, but should be looked into!
- Loading/unloading units from shuttles/overlords/dropships messes up their hotkeys. -- Unchanged, but should be looked into!
- Siege Tanks detonate when colliding with buildings -- Fixed, we just force-unsiege them if they are in siege mode
- Gas harvesting can be tismic -- Not applicable, because workers no longer disappear into the refinery
- When workers are returning their cargo, they take air distance to calculate nearest nexus/cc/hatchery instead of ground distance. -- Fixed

No words, just insane bugs:
- Ramp vortex -- Unchanged, but because we improved the pathing of all the ramps, I don't think this happens anymore!
- Terran workers bugging out after finishing a building -- Improved because the workers follow a consistent RNG-free pattern during construction
- Units hanging up on an out-of-range attack target -- Fixed
- Lifted Terran structures spin when trying to land -- Fixed
- 1/256 miss chance -- Removed
- Infinite range on hold position -- Fixed

New features:
- Allow key rebinding. -- Unchanged, though we allow optional grid hotkeys in config
- Rework unit selection logic in BW when you're trying to select more than 12 units -- Done
- Setting a rally point should change the spawn location of units after they finish building. -- Done
- Gaps between building should depend on building types being put together and not on which side you put each. -- Unchanged, it's actually much harder to wall in CMBW because buildings have more standardized and reduced collision sizes
- Change the F1 key binding from Help screen to another location hotkey. -- Done, and you can also use F5 through F8!
- Give workers a Hold Position command. -- Unchanged, because of the button limit on command cards (we will eventually raise this)
- Subtract resources when you issue a command to build a building -- Unchanged, but we are actually working on this!
- Show all unexplored parts of a map under a fog of war, instead of pitch plack. -- Done (mappers can disable it for campaigns and etc. if they so desire)
- Show a line between a production building and its rally-point. -- Done
- Workers should lose the collision when ordered to build buildings -- Unchanged, I just disagree with this, but we made it easier to build anyway (you can build over own/allied units, and workers don't provide any collision while harvesting resources

On September 09 2023 06:46 pebble444 wrote:
It would be nice to see a video about how this is working at the moment

I commentate loads of matches between community players, you can check out the latest videos on my channel! Otherwise, there are links on the front page that will take you to some showcase videos. We're still working on more!

On September 09 2023 16:44 G5 wrote:
I also find it annoying that goons act more stupid when they're cloaked by arbiters.

Never saw examples of this, but units in Starcraft have an effectively-random delay on all orders (up to 8 frames in many cases, which is 1/3rd of a second). This makes their behavior incredibly variable.

Cryoc

Germany908 Posts

September 10 2023 10:06 GMT

#19

On September 09 2023 16:44 G5 wrote:
I also find it annoying that for no reason at all, sometimes when I drop a dt out of a shuttle, the game bugs out and my opponent will get vision for a slight moment and my DT's take a bunch of damage.

It was probably never intended, but there certainly is a reason that happens. It will always happen when you pick it up while the DT was revealed. As long as it remains in the shuttle, the game doesn't update the "revealed" status of the unit.

TornadoSteve

758 Posts

September 10 2023 14:10 GMT

#20

An overall tank range review (i.e. with the screen angle, etc.) could only be fair imo

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