You might remember me years ago from releasing the very first "unit tester" map that actually had a nice amount of features. Anyways, I've been working tirelessly on implementing what I feel is my favorite board game of all time - Starcraft: the Board Game - into Starcraft 2 as a custom map.
This is actually a huge project, because the game itself has lots of rules, options and strategic elements. My goals are to make your 1st and your 50th experience equally enjoyable, all the while playing a game that has an explaining duration of at least 30 minutes when played as a board game in the real world. If, while playing my game, you are lost in what to do, I have not done my job well. But that's for later, when I'm testing my game.
Whoever is interested, I attempted to make this last year but scrapped that version and retried, this time with a lot more structure to the triggers. 700 actual hours already have been poured into this hobby, and I'm about 30% done.
I won't be updating this thread though. For more updates, please visit my devblog at www.starcraftboardgame.com!
This is the best i've heard from looking around every other day on sc2mapster since a long time. I really love the Board game (with expansion pack) and i would totally be a beta or alpha tester for your map if you ever need one.
Awesome. It's these kind of replies from fellow fans of the board game that I was hoping for.
Of course it'll be with expansion. I'll possibly try to get those SC1 unit models in there too. I'll call on you when I need testers. Did you think the game was balanced? I especially thought Spider Mines were too good.
No it wasnt really balanced. We made a couple custom balance changes to units aswell as to some leadership cards etc.
1. The Nuke is too weak. If you play vs Zerg it might be that he has to kill 1-2 Zerglings and then your nuke did cost twice or thrice as much as he lost. We changed it to 3 Units as well as collateral Damage on the Nuke because without Cloak you cant really use the Ghost and its a pretty big investment in it.
We wanted to offer the possibility to play Ghost - Nuke strategy for everyone and not just for Raynor and the Leadership Card with the Ghost.
2. Offensive play is far too less rewarding. The best you can do is bunker, tech and then stomp the enemys as long as there is a minimum of 3 players in the round and its FFA. You just lose too much if you attack somebody and dont get anything directly from it so here are our changes (as we always play FFA):
If you completly destry the Main base (so the defending player doesnt move or crushes and rebuilds it on another field of the planet) you get 1 extra victory point. If you manage to get on the field of the mainbase with some of your troops you get 2 ressource marker of your choice (You get these marker even if the defending player doesnt lose the CC). The result in the last couple of matches were constant aggression over all 4 players. And it was really interesting as 2 of them teched, one failed and was defeated but the other one managed to get away with it barely and then striked back with Carrier and lastly won the Game.
In addition, this removes the bunkering on Victory points what we think is the most destructive way of fun. E.g. Player 1 bunkers and gets VP (and could tech), Player 2 has to attack to stop him, maybe crushes a little bit of him but in reward he doesnt get anything and his homebase is left with nothing.
(We know that this might be abused by collateral damage, we have to fix this issue. Maybe we change collateral damage to something similar powerful)
3. Spider mines too powerful as you said. We werent quite sure how to balance it because we didnt want to change the combat cards so we just raised the cost of the tech by 1 Vespin Gas as far as i can remember.
4. The protoss leadership card on Stage 3 for Tassadar where he gets 8 Transporter is quite a joke in Comparison to mayber Arcturus Mengsk where he gets every Stage 3 building and every order is a gold order. Sure, if you play the whole game just to utilize this card it may be good but overall its just crap.
Kerrigan can sometimes be very very powerful in comparison to some other heroes. We didnt change her but if you reach Stage 2 you dont have to waste any thought on what to pick.
5. Medics are the most useless units in the whole game. I tried twice to go for a Biobuild (of course supported by another tech tree to utilize all combat cards) but in the end i was always crushed.
The medic cards are just not strong enough that they have a reason to stay on your hand. And without any medic card on your hand you wasted some ressources. We didnt do any changes yet but our plans were to make some of the medic cards a little bit weaker (or more expensive) and to let them stay in your area where you also place your strategy cards so that they are always active.
We thought this might solve the issue as there are too many combat and tech cards you need in order to be succesful with this strategy (bunker, stim pack, cloak, nuke, heal, optic flare (dunno if its the right translation as i have the german game), and the blockade for mech units for the ghost. All useful but just too much cards.
I cant think of any other change we did so far. Maybe i forgot something.
I hope you keep up the work and that we can enjoy this awesome game online!
Yea the time could be a big problem as a normal match can last up to 4 or 5 hours. It can also be finished in 3/4 hours but this is rarely the case. But on the other hand things should be going on smoothly as there is no need to setup the game and there could maybe be a timelimit for each order to place and to execute.
I'm aware of time issues, which is why I have given the ability to assign workers for gas/minerals and build stuff without being in a build order. Once it's your turn, all you'd need to do is review your plan and press confirm build order.
You can also browse tech cards at any time. Aswell as your combat cards. There's a lot to do even when out of turn.
I didn't have any trips planned for last summer as all money was spent on the exchange program I'm currently experiencing. Made this into a huge summer project. Can't work on it now though, my laptop is a little slow unlike my computer back home. I'll start again at Christmas.
Thanks, just to confirm: there's nothing we can do about people playing on low resolutions right? The ui gets screwy at some lower limit of resolution.
Well if it isnt possible then just write it in the description that in can only be played in a certain resolution if everything shall look great (and i am sure it will)
Hello guys,
I registered here just to say that you are making awesome work with converting board game into real SC2 map.
It's my dream to have digitalised SCtBG - I love this game but I have big trouble with finding competitive players.
About the graphics - I know there is made Starcraft the Board Game module, which works with VASSAL.
Basically, it has every one component scanned with good quality.
Maybe you could use some of its components graphics into your map?
Creator of this module is Zackreaver (http://bit.ly/TrJ9mS) - maybe he could share his scans for higher purpose? :)
Hello guys, I registered here just to say that you are making awesome work with converting board game into real SC2 map. It's my dream to have digitalised SCtBG - I love this game but I have big trouble with finding competitive players. About the graphics - I know there is made Starcraft the Board Game module, which works with VASSAL. Basically, it has every one component scanned with good quality.
Maybe you could use some of its components graphics into your map?
Creator of this module is Zackreaver (http://bit.ly/TrJ9mS) - maybe he could share his scans for higher purpose? :)
Not sure what I can use the graphics for, but this is pretty cool though.
In other news, I'm continuing this project on January. Stay tuned. Likely to be finished Q3 2013 :)
Hey guys,
You might remember me years ago from releasing the very first "unit tester" map that actually had a nice amount of features. Anyways, I've been working tirelessly on implementing what I feel is my favorite board game of all time - Starcraft: the Board Game - into Starcraft 2 as a custom map.
This is actually a huge project, because the game itself has lots of rules, options and strategic elements. My goals are to make your 1st and your 50th experience equally enjoyable, all the while playing a game that has an explaining duration of at least 30 minutes when played as a board game in the real world. If, while playing my game, you are lost in what to do, I have not done my job well. But that's for later, when I'm testing my game.
Whoever is interested, I attempted to make this last year but scrapped that version and retried, this time with a lot more structure to the triggers. 700 actual hours already have been poured into this hobby, and I'm about 30% done.
I won't be updating this thread though. For more updates, please visit my devblog at www.starcraftboardgame.com!
That's awesome, I'd much rather play a map than the actual thing. Keep it up.
I would definitely play this.
This is the best i've heard from looking around every other day on sc2mapster since a long time. I really love the Board game (with expansion pack) and i would totally be a beta or alpha tester for your map if you ever need one.
@minq1: Go
Awesome. It's these kind of replies from fellow fans of the board game that I was hoping for.
Of course it'll be with expansion. I'll possibly try to get those SC1 unit models in there too. I'll call on you when I need testers. Did you think the game was balanced? I especially thought Spider Mines were too good.
No it wasnt really balanced. We made a couple custom balance changes to units aswell as to some leadership cards etc.
1. The Nuke is too weak. If you play vs Zerg it might be that he has to kill 1-2 Zerglings and then your nuke did cost twice or thrice as much as he lost. We changed it to 3 Units as well as collateral Damage on the Nuke because without Cloak you cant really use the Ghost and its a pretty big investment in it. We wanted to offer the possibility to play Ghost - Nuke strategy for everyone and not just for Raynor and the Leadership Card with the Ghost.
2. Offensive play is far too less rewarding. The best you can do is bunker, tech and then stomp the enemys as long as there is a minimum of 3 players in the round and its FFA. You just lose too much if you attack somebody and dont get anything directly from it so here are our changes (as we always play FFA): If you completly destry the Main base (so the defending player doesnt move or crushes and rebuilds it on another field of the planet) you get 1 extra victory point. If you manage to get on the field of the mainbase with some of your troops you get 2 ressource marker of your choice (You get these marker even if the defending player doesnt lose the CC). The result in the last couple of matches were constant aggression over all 4 players. And it was really interesting as 2 of them teched, one failed and was defeated but the other one managed to get away with it barely and then striked back with Carrier and lastly won the Game. In addition, this removes the bunkering on Victory points what we think is the most destructive way of fun. E.g. Player 1 bunkers and gets VP (and could tech), Player 2 has to attack to stop him, maybe crushes a little bit of him but in reward he doesnt get anything and his homebase is left with nothing. (We know that this might be abused by collateral damage, we have to fix this issue. Maybe we change collateral damage to something similar powerful)
3. Spider mines too powerful as you said. We werent quite sure how to balance it because we didnt want to change the combat cards so we just raised the cost of the tech by 1 Vespin Gas as far as i can remember.
4. The protoss leadership card on Stage 3 for Tassadar where he gets 8 Transporter is quite a joke in Comparison to mayber Arcturus Mengsk where he gets every Stage 3 building and every order is a gold order. Sure, if you play the whole game just to utilize this card it may be good but overall its just crap. Kerrigan can sometimes be very very powerful in comparison to some other heroes. We didnt change her but if you reach Stage 2 you dont have to waste any thought on what to pick.
5. Medics are the most useless units in the whole game. I tried twice to go for a Biobuild (of course supported by another tech tree to utilize all combat cards) but in the end i was always crushed.
The medic cards are just not strong enough that they have a reason to stay on your hand. And without any medic card on your hand you wasted some ressources. We didnt do any changes yet but our plans were to make some of the medic cards a little bit weaker (or more expensive) and to let them stay in your area where you also place your strategy cards so that they are always active.
We thought this might solve the issue as there are too many combat and tech cards you need in order to be succesful with this strategy (bunker, stim pack, cloak, nuke, heal, optic flare (dunno if its the right translation as i have the german game), and the blockade for mech units for the ghost. All useful but just too much cards.
I cant think of any other change we did so far. Maybe i forgot something.
I hope you keep up the work and that we can enjoy this awesome game online!
I once tried to have some friends over to play Starcraft: The Boardgame and we hardly got past the rules LOL. this looks cool
@Trieva: Go
Yea the time could be a big problem as a normal match can last up to 4 or 5 hours. It can also be finished in 3/4 hours but this is rarely the case. But on the other hand things should be going on smoothly as there is no need to setup the game and there could maybe be a timelimit for each order to place and to execute.
@minq1: Go
I'm aware of time issues, which is why I have given the ability to assign workers for gas/minerals and build stuff without being in a build order. Once it's your turn, all you'd need to do is review your plan and press confirm build order.
You can also browse tech cards at any time. Aswell as your combat cards. There's a lot to do even when out of turn.
@XGDragon: Go
That sounds perfect. Parallel turns in other words. This should solve the problem.
Did you really spend 700 hours on the project? :D Insane! =)
@minq1: Go
I didn't have any trips planned for last summer as all money was spent on the exchange program I'm currently experiencing. Made this into a huge summer project. Can't work on it now though, my laptop is a little slow unlike my computer back home. I'll start again at Christmas.
Oh my this is so amazing! Just today I thought how awesome it would be if this game was implemented in sc2. I'll definitley will play this ALOT!
Great UI, nice job on that
Thanks, just to confirm: there's nothing we can do about people playing on low resolutions right? The ui gets screwy at some lower limit of resolution.
Well if it isnt possible then just write it in the description that in can only be played in a certain resolution if everything shall look great (and i am sure it will)
Hello guys, I registered here just to say that you are making awesome work with converting board game into real SC2 map. It's my dream to have digitalised SCtBG - I love this game but I have big trouble with finding competitive players. About the graphics - I know there is made Starcraft the Board Game module, which works with VASSAL. Basically, it has every one component scanned with good quality.
Maybe you could use some of its components graphics into your map?
Creator of this module is Zackreaver (http://bit.ly/TrJ9mS) - maybe he could share his scans for higher purpose? :)
@GrimGoddy: Go
Welcome to the mapster :P
Not sure what I can use the graphics for, but this is pretty cool though.
In other news, I'm continuing this project on January. Stay tuned. Likely to be finished Q3 2013 :)
Work has been resumed
That's awesome:) I'm keeping my fingers crossed for your work!