I just noticed this tool via JP's twitter, as it caught his attention as well. Here's the intro video that was just posted today:
The tools included are an on the fly "live overview" feature which allows for drawing lines, arrows, and highlighting areas during game play. The other tool is a "map overlay" feature that allows the entire map to be viewed and analysis of the entire map to be done.
I think this looks like it could be a great tool for casters. It would fit perfectly with the after game analysis that I have seen from some tournaments (lol @ forgetting specific tournament but I have definitely seen it done).
What do you guys think of this tool? Obviously its in alpha at the moment so more features/ tune ups will be made.
Also, I didn't see a thread by the actual creator of the tool, but if he posts one then by all means discuss it there ^_^.
This looks like a really excellent tool. I'm sure that if it gets polished up, it'll see use in major tournaments.
One thing that it definitely needs, that it looks like is still missing, is hotkey shortcuts. If you prepare overlays it doesn't matter as much, but if you're doing on-the-fly analysis like you see a lot during football (American hand-egg) analysis, it needs to be as quick as possible.
Wow this looks really good, I believe it might not fit well for tournament matches (except for the first minutes of the game, or when the players are positioning themselves on the map) but I can see a show like the Day9 Daily using this very well. Seems like a great tool, but it needs hotkey
Very well-done. Once casters figure out how to utilize this it should be a very strong casting/analysis tool.
I guess you won't be able to select units themselves while it's up? During a live cast you would need to coordinate intimately with the observer to use it on the fly, unless there's a screencap option, which might be a good way to implement this.
A very good start none the less, I hope to see some great things as it progresses through Alpha to Release (I wonder if the developer is planning on charging tourneys/casters for licenses.)
On May 13 2012 02:01 Gonff wrote: Holy Mackerel. This blew my mind. It looks really good already I'd say, but I wonder how difficult it is to get the hang of in practice?
Even if people know the basics with it they'll probably fine. Some of the sports castersbarely know how to use their own little drawing tools to their fullest and it seems kind of bad coming from our point but it still manages to get the job done
This sounds similar to the "drawing functionality" for casters that Blizzard had planned for HotS a while ago.
I really think this will help though, there are so many times when casters and trying to articulate certain things about the map when drawing on it like this would be so much easier to do.