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England2675 Posts
On August 15 2010 10:09 Ocedic wrote:
I like how you talk about maximizing information to follow the flow of the game, yet you say no to health bars. There's literally no benefit to not having health bars displayed. I could care less about the graphics; if you want pretty pictures go play Crysis.
I don't understand the last bit. You "could care less" so like, you're ok with it? I don't understand.
In a fight, whether a unit is alive or not is more important than how much health it has. Seeing health bars greatly conflicts with seeing unit placement and numbers. If there are several bars all together, are they marines or zerglings? A bar disappearing tells me that something has died. A unit dying in front of me tells me what has died. Do you see the difference in information here? I'm not saying it's impossible, but a unit's health only matters after a fight to an observer. If these marines had red health during the fight then they're about to die. Great. If a ling is attacking a marine, you can work out that it's about to die. For those few seconds during a fight you might get an idea who appears to be ahead, but is that much more than watching how much stuff is dying. It's unnecessary.
By reducing a marine to a bar, it's no longer a marine. It's a bar. Health bars in large fights just remove so much info. Great if you can tell which units are which by their health bar, but it's much easier to see what's actually happening without them. If you want to watch a fight that is purely bars decreasing until one team has no more bars, you're removing what is fun to watch and that's what is actually happening. Aliens shooting eachother with stuff.
You think new viewers are going to realise that because that health bar moved and the other didn't that one is probably a ling and the other is marine? How many non-players would like to watch bars decrease and how many would like to watch pretty lights blow things up.
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Fighting with others preferences is gonna happen. Justifying pushing your own preferences onto others w/o having a commanding power over them is kinda rude I do understand tho that the other was somewhat aggressive, but "doing it well" does not always fall under your idea of "well" because that's just another opinion, arguing it instead of compromising it is just gonna turn into a bitchfest.
Personally I like health-bars, but i have an understanding others do not, maybe toggling them on and off every now and then to check the stats of an army post-battle would be a better suggestion than just keeping them off, since health-bars can make questions pop up and/or justify player decisions.
All in all, i think most of your ideas for an observer are great for any1 looking to take that job off the hands of the commentators and making better overall watchable games.
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Also of note: You can set your own camera hotkeys (F8-F12) as an observer, for easy hopping to and from bases/chokes/Zel'naga towers or whatever else.
And if you're casting from a replay and do happen to miss something really important (hopefully only because there's so much happening at once), REWIND THE DAMN REPLAY. I'd rather watch a video a few seconds longer and break that sense of "live" realism than miss something useful.
Final note: That program people use to make blocks to cover replay bars is most often Irfanview with everything but the image/outer border hidden (which can be done as the top 4 items on the view menu) and set to only on top under options. Any other option but more professional overlay software is not recommended (I'm looking at you guy that tried to use a Youtube caption to cover it and failed).
All in all, excellent guide.
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very good, and i was considering casting some of my bros games (who is upper diamond btw)
up until a few minutes ago, THX
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Great read, it's always so incredibly frustrating to watch a commentator who doesn't focus on the correct things. (HDStarcraft and Husky are notorious for missing drops.)
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Very good post, and some seriously good advice that new and veteran casters/observers would do well to read. I want to start casting some games, so I could use all the threads like this I can get lol.
One question for you (and others in the thread too if you care to give inpupt): Many times during other casts I've seen the observer get a "*friend* has signed online!" notification. Most people I've seen tend to ignore this alert and let it go away on its own. Is it better to leave it alone and not draw the viewer's attention to it, or to quickly close the message and continue casting?
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this is such a good thread, there are so many casters i don't watch cuz of how bad they obs.
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Thanks for this. It's really good advice. 
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I usually pop health bars up when intense micro is going on. All you have to do is press 'H'. That way players can see what the players are microing. But in big battles, it's an absolute taboo.
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Thank you for posting this. I stopped watching a lot of the youtube all-stars because of a majority of what you listed here. I would watch the minimap and go "wow, i really wonder what that huge blob of dudes are doing". While the caster would prattle on about something neato about a forge.
Let me see the fiting pl0x, the drops, the tech switches, the clutch building placement and the fast blocks.
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I agree with everything you said except health bars, majority of commentators are just sooo terrible at observing it makes u want to smash the screen hd and husky come to mind - never watching their matches every again.
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also :
- Do not restart the stream right after the end of a match, some peoples are minutes late in receiving the stream, and will miss the end of this 40min game.
- Do not stop the stream right away when going to bed, for the same reason.
- Setting the gama level to "everything is a shade of white" will not successfully hide the low quality of your stream.
- Do not spend half the time complaining about the quality of your stream, we can see that it sucks.
- No, that's not ustream lagging the stream, unless you have 10k+ viewers
- Do not interrupt your co-caster. If you have him along, you surely want him to talk. Specifically if the guy knows how to play and you do not.
- Do not try to be day9, you can do a nice job in your own way. Specifically do not theorize when you're not very good, or to say what everybody knows. You still might do an entertaining cast without doing that.
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This thread is something that every single observer should read. awesome stuff, agree with everything you said here
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The pic at the end made this thread.
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while this thread made me a bit angry about how it was written in such a "this is right, everything else is wrong" kind of way, i did agree with most except for a couple parts. income tab is useful at times. it lets you see how many harvesters each player has, which i think is a pretty important aspect. also, i for one cannot stand seeing a stream/video without health bars, i have no idea how anyone can play or cast without them and it drives me crazy.
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Health bars are especially bad when people have bad streams.
I don't have much against health bars, i play with them on, and i see whats a marine and whats a zergling easy.
Anyway, for streamers, please don't play music in games. And don't assume who won so much before someone says GG (looking at you gosugoaching TV)
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This is it, this is how you observe. When you've seen someone do it right, there's nothing more annoying than seeing it done wrong. However when they get it right, oh baby, it's like a fine cigar.
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You come across as a complete douche >_> but you have solid points.
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On August 15 2010 21:31 Raskit wrote:
You come across as a complete douche >_> but you have solid points.
He says it exactly the way pretty much everyone feels when they see it done wrong.
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i have to agree with the OP. good casting/observing is important to the success of any E-sport since it will drag its observers deeper into the game. i think all casters/observers and even ppl like day9 should view this thread.
of course u dont have to be 100% super serious. a few jokes here and there to lighten the mood is very nice and enjoyable for casting as well.
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EPT
