We at Spawning Tool have been thrilled by the engagement and enthusiasm from the community in using our site. So far, we have had tens of thousands of replays uploaded and over 200 build orders shared. However, the biggest limitation and most common request we have is that you can only access the data from the browser. To address that, we’re excited to announce the Spawning Tool Build Advisor, the best way to learn a build order.
Through Overwolf, the Build Advisor allows you to follow a build order live with an in-game overlay during your game. Browse through the builds listed on our site, then select your winning strategy to use during any ladder or custom game. As soon as the game starts, the overlay will sync with the in-game timer and walk through each step of the build so you don’t miss a thing. And that’s it.
To get started, download and setup Overwolf, then install the Spawning Tool Build Advisor app. It will automatically launch when you start StarCraft.
We hope you find the app as useful as we have. As always, if you have any feedback, please reach out to us on twitter @spawningtool or via email spawningtool@gmail.com . We would love to know how we can improve your StarCraft.
For those wary of any EULA issues, considering it is an outside program using inside of starcraft, we contacted Blizzard and they are onboard with it! We are very excited for the future to come and thank you guys again for supporting us so far!
Blizzard should have implemented this right away. When I played some Dota 2 the item guide thingy was really helpful. Really cool stuff, thanks for your efforts. Will try it out soon for sure!
On August 17 2016 10:50 Knatterking wrote: Blizzard should have implemented this right away. When I played some Dota 2 the item guide thingy was really helpful. Really cool stuff, thanks for your efforts. Will try it out soon for sure!
Glad to hear you have as high hopes as us! The learning curve for starcraft is so high, that anything to help new players is a very important thing to help the scene grow even more! We are very excited to see how this app does
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
And then you opponent does not play standard and all remainders/timings etc are not only useless but also clutter your vision. Imo tools like this have a constant distraction factor while having a decreasing usefulness. So in lower leagues usefulness outweighs distraction, which is nice since it makes the learning curve not as steep, but I think in GM or tournaments it hurts more then it helps.
Great work. Would be really cool if Blizzard adopts this ingame like the GameHeart overlay.
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
And then you opponent does not play standard and all remainders/timings etc are not only useless but also clutter your vision. Imo tools like this have a constant distraction factor while having a decreasing usefulness. So in lower leagues usefulness outweighs distraction, which is nice since it makes the learning curve not as steep, but I think in GM or tournaments it hurts more then it helps.
Great work. Would be really cool if Blizzard adopts this ingame like the GameHeart overlay.
That's our thought on it. Even at a masters level of play, I cannot focus on the game as well when I'm trying to learn a build order at the same time. It's a great learning tool and does not provide much of an advantage besides being able to follow a build accurately and learn it faster. Any sort of early game harass would also throw off the builds, as you said.
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
We definitely see why people would have issues with it, which is exactly why we reached out to blizzard to make sure we were not violating any ToS. Considering they are on board, I think we should all be happy about the potential learning that can happen with this app! Learning a build can be hard in the lower leagues and if you are focused on following a build, you will not be focused on other parts of the game. This just makes it easier to memorize the build!
Hi, new player here. Would love to start using this to learn, since usually I can only look at build orders in SALT custom games. Can people get banned for this?
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
This is functionally no different from having a post it note stuck to the edge of your monitor with the build order written out. The overlay can't pull information from the game to determine whether or not you made the building on the specified supply, followed the proper timing, or anything else like that.
It's basically a nicely formatted list, optimized for use over the top of the game, prefilled with build orders, with an easy method to add your own.
Anyone using a tool like this in a competitive environment is already at a disadvantage - you should know the build so well as to not need the tool before trying to play competitively with it.
On August 17 2016 14:26 Duckman wrote: Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
We asked Blizzard about it, and they said that it doesn't constitute cheating according to their terms of use, so it should be legal on ladder!
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things. Now while I think spawning took is a really great tool an in game overlay is way beyond what I think should be allowed in ladder or tournament games
This is functionally no different from having a post it note stuck to the edge of your monitor with the build order written out. The overlay can't pull information from the game to determine whether or not you made the building on the specified supply, followed the proper timing, or anything else like that.
It's basically a nicely formatted list, optimized for use over the top of the game, prefilled with build orders, with an easy method to add your own.
Anyone using a tool like this in a competitive environment is already at a disadvantage - you should know the build so well as to not need the tool before trying to play competitively with it.
Having ingame overlays be legal opens up a lot of doors to come up with clever ideas to display useful data. As far as I can tell the tool actually runs its own timer and displays information based on it, so you could essentially make a recurring timer for a production cycle throughout the game and even if you get desynced its not overly hard to pick a specific number and use that as your base point for the completion of the cycle. And thats just talking about this tool you can obviously program more advanced stuff as well with less clutter on the screen. Written notes are static, programmed overlays certainly don´t have to be.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things.
This is just a fancy version of a post-it note on your monitor with a build order. Don't tell me you think thats unfair or counts as cheating.
Heck, I have a notebook full of build orders and timings for each match up. I just flip to the build i want to play. This sounds like a great software implementation for that very thing.
Its no different than having a second monitor and having a build order on a word document or something.
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things.
This is just a fancy version of a post-it note on your monitor with a build order. Don't tell me you think thats unfair or counts as cheating.
Heck, I have a notebook full of build orders and timings for each match up. I just flip to the build i want to play. This sounds like a great software implementation for that very thing.
Its no different than having a second monitor and having a build order on a word document or something.
Okay so let´s asume that an ingame overlay is legal, having hotkeys to affect it is legal and having it run its seperate timer is legal. By that logic you can easily code a program with a tiny UI that runs a timer exactly the length of an inject and displays a warning when it is about to complete the cycle. You bind the inject key to the same hotkey as your custom program and have it reset it´s internal timer and warning. So essentially you now have a tracker for your injects displayed on the screen. Fair? Not really no.
On August 18 2016 05:12 PinoKotsBeer wrote: Use a PP to mess up the counter in case the opponent is using this overlay
Shame its a windows only program.
Right now if the game pauses, the timer will keep going, so it will throw the build off sync. That is an issue we are working to solve. We might be able to stop the timer and start it the same way we detected that a game had started.
We also will be reaching out to blizzard more about what we can do to further implement it. We feel that this is a very valuable resource and if GameHeart can be used by Blizz, why not this? Right?
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things.
This is just a fancy version of a post-it note on your monitor with a build order. Don't tell me you think thats unfair or counts as cheating.
Heck, I have a notebook full of build orders and timings for each match up. I just flip to the build i want to play. This sounds like a great software implementation for that very thing.
Its no different than having a second monitor and having a build order on a word document or something.
Okay so let´s asume that an ingame overlay is legal, having hotkeys to affect it is legal and having it run its seperate timer is legal. By that logic you can easily code a program with a tiny UI that runs a timer exactly the length of an inject and displays a warning when it is about to complete the cycle. You bind the inject key to the same hotkey as your custom program and have it reset it´s internal timer and warning. So essentially you now have a tracker for your injects displayed on the screen. Fair? Not really no.
You are arguing over a completely irrelevant and probably not existing program. The inject program would count as cheating but what if i set a timer to go off ever "x" seconds on my phone to remind me.
Going over these "what ifs" does not address the issue you originally brought up. If you are a high level player or even a plat player, you will not play as well with a build overlay up and reading it back and forth rather than having your build order already memorized and being able to focus on the game. This is a learning tool to help people get past the massive learning curve that starcraft has.
I respect the opinion that you are presenting and we definitely saw it as a potential issue, which is why we reached out to blizzard. If I were to contact them asking if creating a program that said "build probe" every 12 seconds, of course they would say no, but this program is for the use of memorizing. There is no audio feature (yet.. We have yet to talk to blizz about this) that tells you what to build, so you have to dedicate concentration to knowing what to build next and will not be 100% focused on the build.
I hope this clears up your doubts on the uses of the program.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but is this legal on ladder?
This does not seem like a very fair program, nor something that should be legal. You could essentially stuff it full of reminders for timings, expansions, inject or production cycles and similar kinda of things.
This is just a fancy version of a post-it note on your monitor with a build order. Don't tell me you think thats unfair or counts as cheating.
Heck, I have a notebook full of build orders and timings for each match up. I just flip to the build i want to play. This sounds like a great software implementation for that very thing.
Its no different than having a second monitor and having a build order on a word document or something.
Okay so let´s asume that an ingame overlay is legal, having hotkeys to affect it is legal and having it run its seperate timer is legal. By that logic you can easily code a program with a tiny UI that runs a timer exactly the length of an inject and displays a warning when it is about to complete the cycle. You bind the inject key to the same hotkey as your custom program and have it reset it´s internal timer and warning. So essentially you now have a tracker for your injects displayed on the screen. Fair? Not really no.
You are arguing over a completely irrelevant and probably not existing program. The inject program would count as cheating but what if i set a timer to go off ever "x" seconds on my phone to remind me.
Going over these "what ifs" does not address the issue you originally brought up. If you are a high level player or even a plat player, you will not play as well with a build overlay up and reading it back and forth rather than having your build order already memorized and being able to focus on the game. This is a learning tool to help people get past the massive learning curve that starcraft has.
I respect the opinion that you are presenting and we definitely saw it as a potential issue, which is why we reached out to blizzard. If I were to contact them asking if creating a program that said "build probe" every 12 seconds, of course they would say no, but this program is for the use of memorizing. There is no audio feature (yet.. We have yet to talk to blizz about this) that tells you what to build, so you have to dedicate concentration to knowing what to build next and will not be 100% focused on the build.
I hope this clears up your doubts on the uses of the program.
The point is whether or not programs featuring ingame overlays and things like hotkeys and timers should be allowed or not. What your actual program is meant for and the implementations of those features you have chosen is fairly irrelevant to the discussion of legality as a whole.
Just because the spawning tool program only helps a little doesn´t mean you can´t code an application that helps a lot. Having rules for allowed third party programs on a case-by-case basis does not seem like a particularly great idea.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/4afFGNz.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jkTB54m.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0ehTK7u.png)
