It would be fairly straightforward to compare various hotkey configurations for efficiency and for ease of learning. We'd need replays. Maybe 100 before the change, and then everything afterwords. We'd need comparable replays from people who have not switched, but have played an equivalent amount of games, and are in the same league. You just match the ActionLatencies at the start, and then compare them after the switch. You'd also see what the cost of the switch is, in actual time (e.g., it costs 100ms per hotkey use, and it is back to normal speed after 300 games, and 25ms better than normal after that). You could ALSO see if there were specific hotkeys which were difficult to learn, and which ones may not be any better than
I'm not sure how easy it is to get that data, but it is not challenging to analyze (though it will take some time).
If you could figure out how to make the data collection painless, I'd be willing to analyze the data.
I haven't hit the 1v1 ladder in well over 6 months IIRC. I race switched to protoss from zerg and I changed my keyboard layout to TheCore. Would grinding some games on the ladder and submitting the replays help you guys in any way? I played a bunch of team games in between but nothing really serious... I just wonder if the data would suffer from so many changes (hots + keys + race).
Quick question since no one seems to have brought this up; do you think you're missing 1/2 of the picture here?
If we compare SC2 to say - blitz chess - I think measuring what level of a chess player someone is from how fast he move his pieces (APM/PAC) might gives impression that chess or SC2 is just a matter of moving things quickly instead of something that require understanding of the rules of the game, strength of each pieces alone and in relation to other pieces, positioning, etc?
That's been said, I can't think how can you automate measuring how good someone is at a) game reading b) understanding flow from economy to tech to unit c) scouting d) positioning and counter from replays alone.
I noticed your request for replays from a large number of games (300). I've played 1200 games on and off since release (high masters). Often taking breaks, coming back and re-mastering basing mechanics each time and relapsing in to bad decision making as I relearn basic variables and get my game sense back. So essentially I plateau and I'd imagine you'd see very little improvement over 300 or 600 games as I bounce back and forth to my usual level. And the amount of people with 1000 ranked still in bronze or similarly lower..baffles me even more.
Even rarer would be trying to find someone starting at bronze, willing to improve up to about diamond, and submit their replays.
Since you guys seem to have hit on the ability of replays to show us things like the PAC cycle, do you have any plans of either creating an add-in for SC2Gears so we can track our own PAC cycle, or collaborating with the creator of SC2 gears so he can add this as a core feature?
Additionally, if the answer is yes, what additional statistics might it be possible for us to pull from our own replays to gauge our progress and/or helping us improve our play level?
On March 06 2013 05:14 JinDesu wrote: One small note - I don't know if it's because the sun is glaring in from my window right now, but white text on almost teal background is a little hard to read. Sorry for being a bit picky.
I did the layout for this and agree it's not great I might change it to yellow or something, will try to fix today.
The results are pretty cool, looking forward to seeing it published.
Try to avoid yellow as much as possible too. It's just not user friendly at all either and should be avoided as much as possible too. D:
On March 07 2013 04:49 JaKaTaK wrote: @figq I absolutely agree, especially with HotS, there are more and more reasons to use more control groups. Which is why I use a layout that supports 10 control groups and 8 camera location keys all within 2 keys reach of my resting position.
On March 06 2013 05:14 JinDesu wrote: One small note - I don't know if it's because the sun is glaring in from my window right now, but white text on almost teal background is a little hard to read. Sorry for being a bit picky.
I did the layout for this and agree it's not great I might change it to yellow or something, will try to fix today.
The results are pretty cool, looking forward to seeing it published.
why not just change it to the dull light blue of TL? I find this colour is extremely ez on the eyes.
Don't know if someone already dumped this here, but it seems to be quite interesting:
Defining Cognitive Science | Mark Blair: Real-time strategy video games
Dr. Blair talks about his current research explores expertise in the context of real-time strategy (RTS) games such as Starcraft II. He discusses the findings of his team's first study, which is the largest expertise study ever conducted, as well as the limitations and vast potential of this approach.
Mark Blair is Associate Professor in the Cognitive Science Program at Simon Fraser University. He leads his research team in the Cognitive Science Lab looking at how selective attention, the ability to pay attention to important features and ignore irrelevant ones, supports categorization, and interacts with our memory and perceptual systems.
To participate in his current study see: http://skillcraft.ca/ Presented by the Cognitive Science Program, Simon Fraser University.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/11/rzrnostromoisolatedleft-small.jpg)
