Hey Xiphias! Very cool to see people still working on starbow. The pathing change from last august is great, less constant unit turning cleans things up visually.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

December 01 2018 16:20 GMT

#6903

Thanks, we have another small patch coming out as soon as Kabel checks his e-mail

Will fix the lurker bug and make pathing cause less lag.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

December 01 2018 19:33 GMT

#6904

Speaking of...

Patch

Spawn Locust on Vipers cost reduced from 150 energy to 125 energy
Fixed a bug where the spikes of Lurkers would not show.
Fixed a bug where the spikes of lurkers would branch out to kill the invisible units spawned by our pathing system
Corsairs now use the LotV model.
Pathing now causes less stress on CPU/GPU

Some notes about this
Spawn Broodling on SC1 Queen is 150 energy and has a guaranteed kill. Spawn locust is only 200 damage and although the locusts are better than the broodlings, we still felt it was a tad too pricey. We discovered that the invisible units that generated to make our pathing system had a lot of abilities and behaviors added to them from their default state. This has all been stripped and might help improve performance. The pathing itself should not be affected in any way. The lurker bugs led us down this path of investigation. Huge thanks to decemberscalm for his help in fixing these bugs.

StarscreamG1

Portugal1653 Posts

December 02 2018 02:53 GMT

#6905

Hi Xiphias. I love to play BW and SC2, and played a lot of Starbow at the beginning. I would love to come back to SB but all the changes puts me back. Isn't an option to go back with most of the changes, and go back to the early stages, where we have some units and pathing bw alike, and others things like selection from SC2? I think it would be great to get more players.
Best regards, you are amazing!

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

December 02 2018 07:18 GMT

#6906

Actually, the Starbow we have now is a lot more similar to BW than Starbow was intended to be. There is a SC2BW mod that tries to faithfully recreate BW in the SC2 engine if you don't want any non-BW stuff. But, atm, I'd wager that 85% of BW openers and strategies still work in Starbow. Maybe with some slight modifications.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 17 2019 15:07 GMT

#6907

New patch! (kinda).

Let me preface this with how the Arcade works. Starbow consists of a main mod file with the underlying changes and a bunch of maps to play on, made by several community members. Whenever someone makes a Starbow map, they have to set the Starbow mod file as the dependency. Back in 2014 or so, Kabel stepped away from Starbow, but he was the publisher of the mod file. So, whenever the design team wanted to patch the game, they would have to send the updated mod file to Kabel and he would have to publish it. This raised the question, what if Kabel just goes offline? What will happen then with Starbow?

So for a long time, we wanted to upload our own mod file and try to encourage new maps to go on the new mod file, but it's a bit messy. It's basically just me left of the design team (and I don't do much either), but I've finally downloaded every single playable Starbow map, changed the dependency to a new mod file and re-uploaded many of them. I have not re-uploaded all as we are very few players atm. I'll upload more maps by demand. Kabel has removed all the maps he's published and so has many other map-makers so that there should be only one version on Starbow up at the moment.

There are some old maps still floating around, and even though Kabel has removed the old main mod file, they still somehow seem to work. If you want to be sure you are playing on a map with the newest mod file, then look for maps where the map name is before "- Starbow" and not after.. Also "published by Xiphias" should do it.

If the following mapmakers see this post, then please remove your old Starbow maps:

SantiMagic
Zeteo
Amnesia
Solstice
Crisci
SliTaz
DeathTBO
TzTz

I also fixed a graphical bug for the creep tumor. If I can find some players, I might play more and it might lead to more changes in the future. At least it will be easier to make changes in the future.

EDIT: I tried to fix the issue where nothing shows up if you play vs AI by removing the custom AI triggers, but it did not fix it

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 17 2019 17:03 GMT

#6908

Wanted to rant some more.

Starbow seeks to preserve all that is good strategically in the original Starcraft but try to give each match-up some new options. As well as giving the players the benefit of a modern RTS engine with smart-mining, unlimited unit and building selection and smart-casting of spells. Starbow is in a pretty good place at this point in this regard after a ton of prevoius work of getting it to feel as much as BW as possible.

In addition, Starbow seeks to give each match-up a new option in tech without messing up current BW builds too much. This is where reality falls a bit short of the goal. We also sometimes just don't know, due to lack of testing. I'd like to present each match-up and note down potential new strategies in Starbow that would not work in the original Starcraft.

ZvT: Nothing much here. One might argue that this was such a fleshed out match-up in BW already since terran can go either bio or mech, and zerg can go either muta or lurker openings. There are eruptors to deal with a mass fleet of late-game science vessels as smart-casting makes science vessel groups spiral faster out of control in Starbow than they did in Starcraft.

ZvP: Not too much here either, but again, almost all tech options that existed in BW could be used here as well. There is the additional harass opportune for protoss with sentinels as they often already go Stargate builds. Again, Eruptors to help vs too big clumps of corsairs.

TvP: Here there are indeed more options in Starbow. Bio in TvP was almost non-existent, and tries to be more viable in Starbow. This needs more testing though. Also, Stargate openers are more viable compared to robo in Starbow as the sentinel can act as a detector before observers are out and can also harass instead of reavers.

ZvZ: This match-up is perhaps the most different from BW, and not without reason. BW ZvZ almost completely removes macro as a skill set and is extremely focused on micro and build orders. The small splash attack of queens as well as the Eruptors ability to chase off small groups of mutas opens up the hydra/lurker tech path as more viable in Starbow compared to Starcraft. I feel ZvZ starbow atm is in a good place and quite an enjoyable match-up.

PvP: This one is a bit more similar to BW compared to ZvZ, but the sentinel makes Stargate openers a tad more viable than they were in BW. However, it's hard to compete against the punch of a reaver in PvP. Would like to see more testing here.

TvT: Does bio work here? That is the question. If so, we have a whole new tech path available in this match-up compared with BW. Needs more testing, but should be more viable than BW bio in TvT.

This is stuff that has been on my mind, just wanted to share them. Whenever I think about potential changes in Starbow, I think about reaching the goal of making each match-up has at least two interesting tech paths.

Solstice245

United States145 Posts

March 17 2019 17:11 GMT

#6909

I went ahead and took my thing down. GL

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 17 2019 17:14 GMT

#6910

On March 18 2019 02:11 Solstice245 wrote:
I went ahead and took my thing down. GL

Thanks! Check EU too please. Saw Blacktop still up there.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 20 2019 18:21 GMT

#6911

Published a small fix that makes the attack animation of corsairs work. Thanks to decemberscalm for fixing it for us

Ilyab

United Kingdom5 Posts

March 21 2019 00:27 GMT

#6912

I've tried playing and all I get is a blank map with no units

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 21 2019 05:43 GMT

#6913

On March 21 2019 09:27 Ilyab wrote:
I've tried playing and all I get is a blank map with no units

Like I said some posts ago, if you play vs AI nothing loads. We're working on a fix, but the AI in general in Starbow is really bad since it don't understand most of the new units etc.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 27 2019 07:59 GMT

#6914

Thanks to decemeberscalm we have another small patch:

- You can now play vs AI again without breaking the game!
- Some bug fixes to the warp in models of sentinels and scouts on the Stargate.

Xiphias

Norway2223 Posts

March 29 2019 22:52 GMT

#6915

March 2019 Starbow Patch

Bug fixes

Eruptors should no longer make cliffs go black when they spawn and do other actions. Fixed by replacing the model with the LotV ravager model. (thanks to decemberscalm for help with this one).
Fixed Ghost PDF button

Balance/design changes

Eruptor turn rate improved (it was really slow for some weird reason).
Ghost Point defence drone ability has been changed. Life reduced from 150 to 80. Duration reduced from 80 sec to 40 sec.
Null wards no longer collide with ground units. (No more force fielding ramps with null wards.)
Sentinels re-given their Glare ability. Allows them to detect units in front of them in a certain angle. Movement speed heavily reduced in this mode. Cost 25 energy.

I think the only changes that needs some comment is Glare and the PDF changes. If you go sentinel opening in PvP and your opponent goes for dt you're just dead. So I wanted to add some weaker form of detection for the sentinel. Might make it even weaker if the sentinel opening in PvP proves too strong compared to robo.

The PDF on ghost is just insanely strong. It even hit buildings. Just trying to calm it down a bit. Open for further changes in any direction based on testing.