The Official miniWHEAT Learns to Play SC2 Thread

On January 25 2011 01:43 Ichabod wrote:
Good luck in future endeavors! Phenomenal banner!

On January 25 2011 02:23 BLinD-RawR wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

He should beat miniOov should he ever play SC2.

On January 25 2011 05:05 Lz wrote:
hahaha that was epic.. I loved it haha... btw i need a GG button djwheat hook me up haha!!

On January 25 2011 05:10 mindspike wrote:
I think the easiest area for him to improve would be selecting units. I think intuitively he wants to start his box from the middle of the units rather than start from the upper left of the units. Should be easy to fix if he gets some pointers.

On January 25 2011 05:36 insaneMicro wrote:
The left mouse button shall from now on and forever be known as blueclick on TL!

On January 25 2011 06:14 ziggymondais wrote:
I think my favorite part of episode 1 is when he first starts off by himself. There is just some feeling of victory when he finally boxes his drones and sends them to work.

Oh and the red and blue buttons are a great idea.

On January 25 2011 06:25 Batch wrote:
Having him play zerg should be considered child abuse.

On January 25 2011 06:41 Wesso wrote:
awesome, I thought the best part was when he played without your coaching, he did better than I would expect. If he remembered to build workers he would have won against the very easy ai immediatly.

small tip
If you don't want him to learn about air units yet (which I can imagine) just make sure the opponent is terran. very easy ai will not build banshees, I believe, and the other air units can be ignored.

On January 25 2011 07:22 Torte de Lini wrote:
I love how he bitches about Overlords. Join the club little man, join the club.

Maybe you should turn down the sensitivity on the mouse for him since most children, at a young age, don't have a steady or stable control

On January 25 2011 07:33 djWHEAT wrote:


We're working on getting him his own "setup" to play. A mouse easily gripped, a better chair, etc. but we don't have a ton of money so it's going to be awhile before we can actually do that! It's in our plans tho!!!

On January 25 2011 07:09 Blackjack111 wrote:
Awesome.
Picking it up fast. Blue click, Red click!

On January 25 2011 08:24 Dr. Nick wrote:


miniWHEAT, you be trollin' ^^,

As I sit here to wait for the servers to come back up, it struck me that I could write a little post about Sister Flame.

Sister Flame is the online handle of my middle daughter, currently six years old. She's been playing City of Heroes since she was 4 and 1/2. It was only over the last year we began to team together with my two accounts and have a lot of fun. I thought I let you know what Sister Flame has learned from CoX.

(1) Flame Learned To Read

At the tender age of five, I let Flame play on my second account on my laptop beside me. For a while, I had to tell her what the train destiantions were, what the NPCs were saying and what the villains name were.

It was only mere months before Flame didn't need my help anymore. We were playing one summer evening and I noticed that she wasn't asking me to read things. I looked over at her screen and watched her for a bit. I was intrigued she knew where to go.

"Need any help reading, honey?" I asked.

"Nope. I can read nope. That says Atlas Park and that says Steel Canyon. Those are Clockworks, but I like calling them Clickey Clacks." she replied quite happilly.

Her teacher was quite surprised at the headstart she had on her reading skills. When I informed the teacher that Flame's headstart was the result of playing a superhero online game, I got the weirdest look. Oh well.

Now, at six, I can hear Flame reading slowly over the mission text and the NPC dialogue. She cannot type yet, but if we get on a team together, I usually do the talking for both of us.

(2) Attitude Matters; Not Age.

From time to time, I get a little impatient with my daughters. I do recall the one evening I was unwell, but Flame wanted to play CoH and wanted to get on a big team.

"I'm too sick to play, so you'll have to do it by yourself." I told her, thinking that she'd never figure it out or get booted quickly if she did get invited to a team.

I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes to rest. Twenty minutes later, I stretched and asked Flame how she was doing.

"Good. I am in a big team." she told me.

"Oh yeah?" I asked.

"Yep. People keep joinging, but I think they're playing soccer." she says.

"Why is that?"

"I keep seeing the word 'kick'."

I rolled off the bed and scrolled back through the chat. Apart from several comments about Flame's excellent control and attack with her Fire Blaster, I see several conversations/arguments with some idiots who joined the team and did something really stupid. Most of them wound up being kicked by the leader. I also notice that every so often, Flame has written 'ty'.

"What's the 'ty' for?" I asked.

"Thank you. You type it sometimes. Everytime I see 'Flame', I type it. They like it."

I watched Flame play for another twenty minutes. No one in the group had a clue to her age and she played her role as any good team member should: waiting for 'Go' or 'Ready' before attacking, saving her Rain of Fire for large groups and giving inspirations to thoes that needed it.

Finally, I had to type a message for Flame.

"Thank you all for the team. This is Flame's dad. She has to get up for Grade 1 tomorrow and needs to go to bed. She says you were all great."

I still love typing that message and watching the responses. Most are 'lol' or 'what?!'. One time, a player typed 'Wow. I wonder if my poodle could play.'. All in good fun.

(3) Playing Coh Is Just Like Playing House a.k.a Imagination Is Power.

Flame has always had a decent imagination, but it has improved a lot since she has been playing Coh. She likes to spin stories about her toons and give them a backstory. This has translated well to her schoolwork when she has been asked to do creative writing assignments. She has also developed a healthy curiousity into some of the groups in CoH. Some of the things she has asked me are:

"Why do Skulls hang out in Perez Park?"

"How come the Clockworks don't attack cars or make nasty cars to attack people?"

"Why are Trolls green?"

"Where do the Outcasts get their power?"

Now, she makes up toons with funny names (to us anyways), but good backgrounds. Among some of her mains are Takes Care Of Pets (A MM with two mercenaries: Cat, Dog), Takes Care Of Bats (A PB with Bat Wings) and of course, Sister Flame (a Fire Blaster with her partner, Brother Frost [me]).

So, if you ever run across a Fire Blaster named Sister Flame on Freedom, chances are its my daughter havign fun, but learning many things at the same time. Feel free to team with her, but don't be a "poopyhead" (her words, not mind).

Ciao!

P.S. She is working on her typing skills, so if you see her say "Go", "Go", "Go" about twenty times, don't worry. It's only 1 of about 100 words she can spell.

On January 25 2011 07:33 djWHEAT wrote:


We're working on getting him his own "setup" to play. A mouse easily gripped, a better chair, etc. but we don't have a ton of money so it's going to be awhile before we can actually do that! It's in our plans tho!!!

On January 25 2011 02:23 BLinD-RawR wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

He should beat miniOov should he ever play SC2.

On January 25 2011 20:34 BrainDrained wrote:
So I have been thinking a little bit about custom maps.
Maybe it would be nice with a couple a of maps that focuses on a small part of what u usually do under a normal game.
Maybe like one map that focuses on the opening with sending first drones to minerals, making the first additional workers and maybe up to getting an overlord or up to spawningpool or something like that, and when the goal i met, either that the maps autostart o could be restarted with a click so that you dont need th recreate a new game every time. Maybe it could be a timer included with a couple of goaltimes like you have goals in the challenge missions.
I guess there gould be serveral diffrent maps that focuses on diffrent things with a little bit more advanced goals for every map.

I have also been thinking about some kind of map/maps to train unitcounters, also a little bit like in the challngemissions but simpler. One way to do i might be to show the unit that they should defeat and then they have to pick the unit/untis to counter it with. An a little bit more advanced way might be maps where they are shown a group of units that will attack their base in xxx:min-sec and they have to tech to a counter for it, for example map one they will be fine if they go zerglings, later maps they will need to build some kind of anti air.

I hope some of it made sense, I feel that my ability to explan things in english insnt that good at the moment

On January 25 2011 22:46 REM.ca wrote:


I know you would never ask yourself so I'm going to ask it for you:

please set up a paypal account for miniwheat so that those of us who want to can donate.

On January 26 2011 00:43 iaguz wrote:
"ok, double click the roaches.

Double click the roaches

Those roaches right there

double click the roaches.

C'mon son, double blue click the roaches

Not the zerglings, the roaches

double click the roaches

The roaches

DOUBLE CLICK THE FUCKING ROACHES OH MY FUCKING GOD"

And that's why I can never become a father!

On January 26 2011 00:43 iaguz wrote:
"ok, double click the roaches.

Double click the roaches

Those roaches right there

double click the roaches.

C'mon son, double blue click the roaches

Not the zerglings, the roaches

double click the roaches

The roaches

DOUBLE CLICK THE FUCKING ROACHES OH MY FUCKING GOD"

And that's why I can never become a father!

On January 26 2011 02:48 WArped wrote:
I predict a GSL victory for miniWHEAT in 13 years time.

On January 26 2011 04:21 Clonze wrote:
When can we expect the next episode? everytime this is bumped to the top i check to see if you posted another...

On January 26 2011 04:45 GogoKodo wrote:

I don't know if a specific schedule has been set but I would imagine one per week, similar to djWHEAT's other shows.

On January 26 2011 05:14 FranzP wrote:
I seriously love this show. This is the best show in the world period.

djWheat you really are a freaking genius. I watched episode 0, and i was just amazed at how miniWheat picked up things really fast or yelling at my tv to help him do the right thing. It's like a starcraft thriller where you don't know if the guy playing will be able to play or not. Emotion, laugh, nerd chills everything is in it.

Good luck to you and to your miniyou.

PS: maybe it's my second of third posts, and i lurked this site for like 2 or 3 years, that's how awesome you are. Yeah, that's a lot of awesome.

On January 27 2011 01:15 paksam wrote:
great show! you ever have him try another race? i think he could learn faster as t or p rather than z lol

On January 27 2011 02:15 GogoKodo wrote:

I've seen a few people say this but from what I gather miniWHEAT chose Zerg himself.

Also I'm not so sure that the other races are that much easier to learn. Zerg has the advantage that there is only really 1 building you need to go to to create units. Hit select larvae and you get your entire list of untis to make, no need to click around to all the various buildings to try and find the particular unit you want to build.

Zerg might be more difficult to grasp for someone that already has some RTS experience because they are different, but I think for someone with no experience at all they are a decent choice. The other hard thing about Zerg is larvae management which I don't think will be a concern for a long time to come. It will be awhile before mini starts learning specific strategies where a thing like larvae management matters.

On January 27 2011 05:18 oONishOo wrote:
Where can i get that GG button? I wanna buy it so bad!!

On January 28 2011 05:56 ZergMaestro wrote:
DJwheat your kid is going to be the next BaBy.

Man I remember playing a rts for the first time ever, and i was like 9ish-10ish, and i couldnt grasp the idea of boxing units, and Miniwheat is already doing it.

On January 27 2011 06:24 SichuanPanda wrote:
The speed at which he learned was definitely impressive, but I can't say I'm surprised, children of that age learn basically anything in record time, it just takes a patient and knowledgeable instructor who most importantly knows the way to teach a child. Keep up the good work both DJ and Mini wheat.

On January 28 2011 14:55 Buddhist wrote:
What I find impressive is his motivation and drive to stick to the goal and complete the tasks at hand. He doesn't get discouraged by failure, basically, and that'll be huge in learning this.

On January 28 2011 16:43 Shew wrote:
I'm in love with this series!

It was the cutest thing ever when djwheat said "he GG'd James!" and miniwheat instantly hits the GG button. It put the biggest smile on my face !

miniwheat to masters league let's do it !

On January 26 2011 00:34 djWHEAT wrote:


Since we can only have one paypal as a household, djwheat@gmail.com works fine. Just make sure you put "miniWHEAT" in the title because the whole family uses it. He appreciates it and so do Mom and Dad.

On January 30 2011 22:52 Corvi wrote:
i need that gg button lol

On February 03 2011 23:46 tablet wrote:
I honestly think that we need moar asap. Even a week is surprisingly long time to wait when miniWHEAT is that cool.

On February 04 2011 01:33 djWHEAT wrote:


We're working on Episode 2 right now, and there's a good chance we might see it by the end of the weekend!

On February 04 2011 02:58 Batch wrote:

Sounds great, this is however a project which shouldn't be rushed. If miniWHEAT is pushed to much he will lose the interest for the game.

On February 13 2011 04:32 danielsan wrote:
it's very cute but you're kind of pushing him to do stuff. You need to work on keeping his interest high, even if this means stoping starcraft and go for any other activities.

On March 03 2011 09:16 smacky wrote:
i love the fact that he is learning fundamentals in such a way that he is gonna show up at age 11 with 400 apm and roll everyone in sight

On March 11 2011 10:30 Char711 wrote:

/agree

WHEAT tweeted a little while ago about TheMiniOne (I just thought of that and think it is the coolest name ever) having sat through 6 or 7 games in a row. I can't imagine the level of sheer gosu that kid is going to develop.

On March 11 2011 15:26 VeNoM HaZ Skill wrote:


Sometime soon, nerds will be getting roflstomped stomped by a 5 year old. Pity them.