Starcraft 2

From Summa Bergania

by David Bergan

I've played Starcraft:BroodWars consistently since the week it came out (10+ years ago). I'm a professional computer programmer and game developer... here are some suggestions for Starcraft 2. Hopefully Blizzard will stumble upon these and give them fair consideration. [And just in case that actually does happen, let me hereby declare, Blizzard, that I renounce all legal rights to my ideas on this page. You may fully use (or not use) my ideas, or any inspiration derived from them, without compensating, entitling, or even acknowledging me. The ideas below are fully your intellectual property should you choose to use them. And it's likely that Blizzard may have already thought of these themselves...]

'e' AND 'p' for probe/pylon

Hotkey suggestion:

I like that e is the new hotkey for probe and pylon. But out of habit I occasionally hit p. Since p doesn't do anything, can't we assign e AND p to probe/pylon?

Ctrl-group wireframes

Currently, the little square wireframe icons are 8 across. At a glance, it's hard to tell between when you have 5 units in your group and 6 units in your group. How about putting a few pixels of space between the 4th column of wireframs and the 5th column? That way a quick glance would be 4 + 1 or 4 + 2... which is much easier than counting out 5 or 6.

Ctrl-z = fill the gate with zealots

There are a lot of times when I want to fill a building with queued units. Or a bunch of buildings if I have them set up as a ctrl-group.

Currently, if I want to fill a gateway with zealots, I have to spam zzzzz. If I have tons of cash and 4 gateways in my control-group... filling them requires: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I think it would be nice if, instead of all that keyboard mashing, we could just press ctrl-z to fill all the selected gateways with as many zealots as we can afford (or it can hold).

Same for all other units... probes, carriers, etc.

Units spawn into a ctrl group

I think it would be nice if I could make zealots in a gateway and have them automatically spawn in, say, ctrl-group 1.

How to implement this:

-Select a gateway and can press alt-1... and this commands the gateway to start all units that it makes in ctrl-group 1.

-If you have more than one gateway selected, it applies to them all.

-Same mechanism applies to any building that creates units.

alt-z = 1 zealot in each gate

Again, consider the situation when you have tons of resources and, say, 8 gateways all grouped together. The idea above suggests that ctrl-z should fill all 8 gateways with 5 zealots each (or as many as you can afford)... saving 39 keystrokes. That would be a great feature, but kind of limiting.

Now this idea is that if you pressed alt-z it would fill the 8 gateways with just one zealot apiece. That way, if I quickly wanted a blended army, I could select my gateways and press alt-z, alt-s, alt-d... and I would get 8 zealots, followed by 8 stalkers, and then 8 dark templar. Or (combined with the other suggestion) alt-s, alt-d, ctrl-z... which would fill each gate with a stalker, a dark templar, and 3 zealots.

Just another idea to whittle down keyboard mashing.

In-game chat beep option

Can we add a sound option that when enabled gives a beep in-game when someone sends a message? (like SC1) Half the time I don't notice the messages I receive...

Replays

A few non-crucial suggestions regarding replays:

-Have a button on the end-game screen that allows you to start the replay immediately (instead of leaving the end-game screen, clicking multiplayer, clicking the camera icon, and then selecting the last replay from the list)

-Bring back the ability to watch replays with other people (like SC1)

-Show the end-game/stats screen whenever you leave the replay

-Filenames could be a bit more descriptive. For instance, this is the format I used in SC1 for saving a 1v1 game:

[Date] [Opponent] [MyRace]v[HisRace] [Outcome][Number]

Examples:

2010-02-20 WiseMike PvZ W01

2010-02-20 WiseMike PvZ W02

2010-02-20 WiseMike PvZ L01

For non 1v1 formats I used:

[Date] [GameType] [Outcome][Number]

Examples:

2010-02-20 FFA L01

2010-02-20 CTF W01 <-- capture the flag

2010-02-20 2v2 W01