I’ve been doing contract stuff today, so here’s something I worked on over the weekend instead!
A few things bug me about Starcraft 2. One is how hard it is to have a fun game against someone of a different skill level; the handicapping system sucks. The other is the general opaqueness of the game and figuring out the weaknesses in your play.
This mod’s an attempt to fix both.
The first feature is “Recession”, a new handicapping system. Set your handicap to 70% and you’ll only get 70% as much minerals and gas, though workers and supply structures (pylons, supply depots and overlords) are cheaper to compensate. Net effect: your tech ends up coming out a little bit later and your army ends up only 70% as big. It’s a bit like if you didn’t build enough workers, let money pile up and occasionally forgot to build important structures for a little while. In short, it makes you macro like a typical weaker player. 😀
I’ve played a bunch of games with friends on this system, and frankly it’s great for playing casual games with friends of different skill levels. The trouble of adapting is totally laid on the stronger player, which is, hell, a kind of handicap in itself! It turns out it’s a pretty helpful tutoring feature too – I’ve been teaching a buddy to get stronger, playing at tougher and tougher handicaps each time he starts beating me consistently, and it means he gets fair games as well as being able to see objective improvement in his play.
The second feature is the Stats Panel (above) that pops up at the end of a game. I’m still experimenting with different stats I can collect and trying to figure out what will be useful, but the macro statistics like how much time you were supply blocked for or how efficient your spending is are pretty awesome to have 🙂
I can’t say when I’ll release this since it’s strictly a fun-time project. It might be a few months of occasional weekend days or evenings before I’m happy with how the stats panel analyses games, at least. Still, if you play Starcraft 2, I hope you’ll try it and find it useful when I get it out there.
(If you don’t play Starcraft 2, I’m impressed you read this far! I’ll write about something else on Wednesday.)