EPTI’m brownbear. I've been writing about and making video content for StarCraft II for about a year, mostly focused on game design.
During this time, I’ve learned about many resources helpful to content creators producing content for StarCraft II. I couldn’t find a single “one-stop shop” for hobbyists, so I’ve tried to compile a list with descriptions. I’ll definitely miss things, especially resources related to live streaming. Please feel free to post suggestions and I'll update this post.
If you are not currently creating content for StarCraft II, I highly recommend it. For me, it falls under the same philosophy as to why everyone should write.
SC2 GAME CLIENT API
-- Auto-detect game state (in-game, post-game, in-replay, etc)
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Update live stream titles (e.g. get current player names)
---- Trigger post-game actions (e.g. snapshot MMR data)
BATTLE.NET APIS
-- Player profile metadata, match history, MMR, ladders data, achievements + rewards data
-- API webpage (allows sample requests)
---- Keep an eye out for what APIs, if any, Blizzard releases for SC:R.
-- SC2 Data (OAuth) APIs
---- As far as I know this API is undocumented outside of the announcement forum posts.
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Snapshot personal MMR data after every game
---- Generate worldwide player statistics (e.g. average games played per league per region)
REPLAY PARSING
-- Retrieve game events and metadata from .sc2replay files
-- SCELight – open source replay parser with GUI
---- The engineering behind this project is also interesting and well-done.
-- S2Protocol – open-source, Blizzard-engineered SC2 replay parser (command line only)
-- SC2ReplayStats – upload your own replays and get statistical data on them
---- Most (all?) replays uploaded to this website are publicly available. You can almost always find a recent game by a player if you search for their name + “sc2replaystats”
-- Spawning Tool – generating build orders from replays + searchable catalog of replays
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Analyze replays to generate statistics (e.g. time-to-first-action, build order analysis)
---- Rename and manage replay files
ARCADE GAMES + MODS
-- LOTV Unit Tester – test or showcase any unit interaction on any terrain-style
-- Camera Mod - make map transitions + animations without using the SC2 map editor (search for "FreeCamera" under mods within the SC2 game client)
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Generate situational footage for a video (e.g. a particular unit interaction)
---- Custom camera perspectives
---- Test out unit interactions, especially breakpoints (e.g. hits to kill unupgraded vs. hits to kill with +1)
LADDER DATA
-- RankedFTW – statistics on the overall ladder, player population, and player history of every player on the ladder
-- SC2Unmasked – determine the identity of barcode accounts
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Producing trend-related content, e.g. player population, race distribution, MMR cutoffs by region
PROFESSIONAL PLAY AND HISTORICAL DATA
-- (Remember to check licensing information before using images from these websites.)
-- WCS Website – current standings, player profiles, replay packs, etc
-- Liquipedia – tons of historical data, tournament results, etc
-- Aligulac – statistical data on the professional scene
-- Community Feedback Archive – updates from the development team
-- Example Use Cases:
---- Research
CONTENT CREATORS
-- (I’ve kept this list intentionally short and specific to resources for content creators rather than SC2 players generally.)
-- SCDojo (Artosis) – wide variety of pieces and one of the few available resources w/ unbroken record of work from the early days to today
-- PiG (PiG) – current meta + strategy
-- Code of Honor (Patrick Wyatt) – engineering and culture details of early WC + SC development
-- TerranCraft (Max Yu) – in-depth on Terran plus some general articles on the game
-- AVEX - mapmaker w/ regular commentary on map design
-- I also recommend the “Modest Musings” series from feardragon and the numerous thoughts + interviews series from Thorin
-- Suggestions From Replies To This Thread
---- SC2 Map Stream - stream showing the mapmaking process
---- All Things Zerg - current zerg meta
“GENERAL LEARNINGS”
-- Anytime I watch replays from an old patch version, I am forced to restart the SC2 client in order to log back into Battle.net and open another replay. There’s probably a smart way of fixing this, but for me I work around it by disconnecting my machine from the Internet and playing SC2 in offline mode. I can then open a replay, load the earlier version of the client, quit the replay, and open a new replay without restarting the client.
-- Windowed and Windowed Fullscreen have a non-trivial impact on game performance compared to Fullscreen.
Finally, here’s a listing of research and background resources on the game – developer interviews, design documents, and news articles. Sometimes these can be hard to find through web searches, even if you already know they exist. I’ve tried to organize them by category and write a small description for each one.
STARCRAFT II PRE-RELEASE INTERVIEWS + ARTICLES + PRESENTATIONS + ETC
-- game design workshop interview w/ rob pardo, focuses on wc3 development but relates to camera design decisions for 3d rts games
-- Mike Morhaime interview - 1.5 years prior to release
-- no LAN support for StarCraft II
-- Dustin Browder interview - smurfing, rushing
-- interview with Dusten Browder re: economy design
-- starcraft 2 art style interview w/ alan dilling
-- interview w/ dustin browder on starcraft ii vision
STARCRAFT II POST-RELEASE INTERVIEWS + ARTICLES + PRESENTATIONS + ETC
-- interview w/ Blizzard co-founder and SC2 lead designer very soon after release
-- interview w/ Alan Dabiri, lead software engineer on SC2, shortly after release
-- Dustin Browder interview - ability mechanics, esports, lore, China
-- Lowko interview w/ lead of Blizzard co-op design
-- Blizzard art style tenets
-- David Kim 2012 balance report
-- David Kim 2013 Interview - balance, design, maps
-- Dustin Browder, David Kim and Alan Dabiri AMA in 2013
-- David Kim 2014 AMA
-- Community Feedback Update articulating the team's approach to game speed
-- 2010 interview - Battle.net as a platform and offline SC2
-- podcast with Rob Pardo discussing most Blizzard properties
BUSINESS / SALES
-- Legacy over a million sold within 24 hours
-- Wings of Liberty 3 million sales in a month
-- Wings of Liberty over 4.5 million sold
-- Wings of Liberty 6 million sold
-- suing maphack creators
ENGINEERING
-- lockstep simulation - network architecture that applies to most RTS games, written for AoE1
-- SC2 dedicated servers thread
-- StarCraft II engine effects and techniques paper
-- StarCraft II effects and techniques powerpoint
-- the making of warcraft part iii
-- MPQ format
-- MPQ format
-- CASC format - replaces MPQ
Hope this stuff is helpful to other hobbyists. Please feel free to make suggestions and I’ll update the original post.
Best,
brownbear
