GLHF Magazine Summer Edition #5 by GLHF Magazine

SUMMER ISSUE 2013

OFFSTAGE WITH WHITE-RA

AND MORE

MAKE WIDOWS, NOT MINES The swarm’s best options against bio-mine Terrans

LET’S GO TO THE FLOW CHART David Joerg of GGTracker talks about the new replay system

MINE OVER MATTER A blueprint of destruction to combat the Zerg menace GOSU LOUNGE The important role of community in the American eSports scene

I <3 GAMEHEART Ryan Schutter talks about creating the best observer UI in SC2 GLHFMAG.COM

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A SPECIAL THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO CONTRIBUTED TO THIS ISSUE.

EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER Ali Vira

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Jonathan Lee

COMMUNITY MANAGER William Dahlstrom

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ryan Boye

ADVERTISEMENT R Sterling Snead

SENIOR DESIGNER Nicholas Davies

WRITERS Ryan Kelly Tim “TangSC” Clark Chris Bizzel Quantic.MaSsan Timothy Tang Gwyneth Ochs Jacob Willemsma William Dahlstrom

SENIOR EDITOR Ryan Kelly

PHOTOGRAPHY Helena Kristiansson Major League Gaming Dreamhack

EDITORS Don Tam Jon Georgievski Trevor Nichols Rhys Garner Creighton Olsen David Wingrove ART DIRECTION Joey Everett DESIGN Brendon Gouveia Becky Margraf SPECIAL THANKS Tom Swanson David Joerg Ryan Schutter Matthew Wiltshire Brandon Christenson Coffee

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The passion and energy dedicated to GLHF Magazine is, for me, a source of perpetual humility. Coming to the magazine when I did, I discovered a group of people who cherished eSports the way that I did: the dearly enthused, the fanatical, the crazed devotee. Coupled with the myriad talents that make the magazine a reality, the GLHF crew has been an endless inspiration to me, and a testament to the vibrant creativity of the eSports community. Thanks to all of you who make this job so worthwhile. But it would be an incomplete sort of gratitude without mention of the intrepid contributors and community figures featured in these pages. It is my pleasure to highlight our interviews with Ryan Schutter, creator of the Gameheart UI, and David Joerg, creator of GGTracker. Both of these gentlemen exemplify the ingenuity of our community, and it is an honor to provide additional exposure to their work. Also in this issue, Quantic.MaSsan and Timothy Tang go head-to-head in a double creature feature strategy bonanza, providing an insightful look into either side of an iconic matchup. And don’t miss Tim “TangSC” Clark expound upon the virtues of an aggressive mindset, and Chris Bizzell explore the personal side of StarCraft legend White-Ra. On a personal note, we have two pieces highlighting local gaming culture (one that is my own concoction). The future of eSports is wrapped up in the way that culture perceives gaming and gamers, and the eventual normalization of gaming is going to require thriving, dynamic local gaming communities. Contributor Clay Finney gives a fantastic run

down on the logistics of creating your own local tournament, and my own piece highlights the difficulties of a prospective gaming lounge in Seattle. Local community is important; I encourage everyone to visit your local BarCraft, Pubstomp or LAN tournament, or else start your own. WCS and Dreamhack are great for our scene, but nothing is going to justify eSports in the broader arena like widespread, grassroots participation. And for the NA scene, especially, this is an opportunity to motivate new talent and reemerge in international competition. Do you already invest in local gaming? Run your own BarCraft? Let me know; I’d love to hear your stories: ryan.kelly@glhfmag.com This issue has been an exhausting delight to work on, but fear not that there should be rest for the weary: looming on the horizon we have yet more content, more interviews, and some thrilling new possibilities for this, which I assert without qualm to be the finest eSports journal in the world, GLHF.

Ryan Kelly Senior Editor

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026 SUMMER 2013

All-in FTW: The Fine Art of an Aggressive Playstyle

V OLUM E 2 I SS UE 2

EX CL U SI VE S Tech Review: GLHF reviews the Steel Series in-ear Pro

Aleksey Krupnyk: Offstage With White-Ra

Gosu Lounge: Local Community and Gaming

All-in FTW: The Fine Art of Aggression

Let’s Go to the Flow Chart: David Joerg of GGTracker talks about the improved replay file system

I <3 Gameheart: Ryan Schutter talks about creating the best observer UI in SC2

STRATEGY DOUBLE-CREATURE FEATURE! 12

Mine Over Matter: Timothy Tang draws up a blueprint of destruction to combat the Zerg menace

Make Widows, Not Mines: Quantic.MaSsan outlines the swarm’s best options against bio-mine Terrans

COMMUNITY 08

GOOD LUCK — HAVE FUN

DIY Local Scene: The importance of grassroots gaming, and how to start your own tournament

Cover: Image by Rikard Söderberg, Left: Image by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com, Top: Artwork by Blizzard Entertainment

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tech

STEELSERIES FLUX: IN-EAR PRO HEADPHONES BECAUSE HOLY CRAP, YOU NEED NEW EARBUDS AND HOLY CRAP, THESE ARE THE ONES YOU NEED By William Dahlström as a brand, steelseries actually started

with the rather simple concept of hard mouse surfaces, in particular their SteelPad line of products. It had huge success in a market that previously consisted only of sub-par quality old mouse pads. Ever since then SteelSeries have put out more gaming related products than I can probably count, and that’s made them no strangers to audio gear. The product we’re going to review today is proof of that. High quality audio products are hard to get right - even more so when we’re seeing a steady decline in the value of actual sound quality as compared to style, looks and branding. You can understand why it’s refreshing to see, or hear if you will, that SteelSeries really put the focus on sound quality this time around. As a rule of thumb, I’ve always looked outside the gaming market for my audio 6

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needs, mostly because I’ve struggled to find a headset that satisfies the kind of audio quality I’m after. Granted, the SteelSeries Flux In-Ear Pro isn’t a headset; but it’s one of the best damn in-ear headphones that I’ve tried. They stack up to some much more expensive cans like the Etymotic Research ER-4P for almost half the price. This can at-

tributed to their choice of drivers: balanced armature. There are two kinds of drivers typically found when it comes to any type of headset or earphones available on the market today: dynamic drivers and balanced armature. The dynamic drivers are much cheaper to manufacture and are the ones most commonly found. They produce boomier bass

but lack fidelity in high notes and suffer sibilance much easier. Sibilance is when the sound starts hissing because the driver can’t render the highest pitches. The balanced armature construction favor a more clear and crisp sound but lack some of the lowest, often perceived as the boomiest, bass notes. They also feature a much tighter response and better endurance in the highs and thus

are favorable for most situations. This is also why they work so very well with gaming applications compared to the dynamic construction, as you’ll often have often have a lot of sound coming at you rapidly. For example, firing an AK-47 or having a chopper fly overhead.

LET’S MOVE ON TO THE LISTENING TESTS.

- train song This is a pretty deep recording in terms of bass, but the lower notes sounds surprisingly well considering these aren’t the bass-heaviest of cans. The perfectly plucked but somewhat mellow bass line resonate well with the mids and extended highs, and even the stereo separation sounds better than you could expect from a pair of in-ears. holly cole

- the great gig in the sky The lack of bass is rather noticeable here, but the mids, particularly the snares, are spot on. This track is known for its insane vocals and they really get to shine here. There is no sibilance either, which goes further to prove the strengths in a balanced armature construction. pink floyd

- kristen and jim As with the previous track, I can’t help but miss the lower, punchier notes, but the overall balance is really good. Highs blend with the mids perfectly and vibrations from Clapton’s guitar strings comes through clearly. eric clapton

game: starcraft

2 Games are where this headset really shines. The channel separation is great and the directional sound is accurate. There isn’t really much to say here except that you won’t be disappointed, and the fact that the sound goes right into your ear canal adds to the experience. However, I did experience some very light amounts of sibilance at high volume during really intense scenes, but it’s almost unnoticeable unless you listen very carefully and critically.

One thing worth mentioning is the addition of a microphone, which works equally well in your computer as your phone thanks to interchangeable cable heads. Even though I suffered some intial troubles with the connector it’s an extremely convenient system that lets you plug these into almost anything with full functionality. In terms of comfort, SteelSeries made the excellent decision to include a pair of Comply Foam tips that are made of a memory foam-like material that you compress and insert into your ears and they expand according to your ear canal. They also create an excellent seal which improves sound

quality. Should you, for some reason, not want to use these they also include three sizes of rubber dome tips. The cable itself is completely flat, apart from the interchangeable connectors and individual earphone cables which is a nice touch to reduce the chances of your cables tangling. Also included are two rubber hook-like cable fittings that let you wear the headset around your ear, minimizing cable interference and making sure they stay in place no matter what. All things considered this is a great pair of cans, and probably the best ones you can get in the 100-150$ price range. They even

stack up to some of the more expensive cans that are double the cost. The comfort provided by the Comply Foam tips and the interchangeable cable heads make for excellent value and the small but very useful touches like the flat cable and rubber hooks adds that little extra that makes you truly appreciate a product. If you’re in the market for a pair of in-ears I really can’t see a contestant that offers the same kind of versatility and qualityto-buck ratio. GLHF

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DIY LOCAL SCENE THE IMPORTANCE OF GRASSROOTS GAMING, AND HOW TO START YOUR OWN TOURNAMENT By: Clay Finney

verything from game balance to user interface changes, to making the game more accessible to new players has been discussed. However, it seems that one possibility has been overlooked: local tournaments that strive to foster sportsmanship and competition in a region. Local tournaments offer a much smaller prize pool than premier events such as MLG, Dreamhack, or IEM, and usually restrict the contenders to the local region; so these tournaments could also be thought of as regionals. Every competitive video game has a local scene, whether it be Dota 2, Counterstrike, or StarCraft. Especially in the realm of PC gaming, these regional tournaments have been a boon to the growth of players and spectators alike. Events like the Evolution Championship Series, the largest and most prestigious

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fighting game tournament in the world, began as a forty-man tournament out of a small venue in Sunnyvale, California, but has since emerged as the representative event for everything fighting. Today, many events are held on the regional level leading into Evo, such as the SoCal Regionals. These events are all broadcast live, and invite newcomers to test out their skills. This model has proven extremely successful, and the fighting game community has grown immensely over the last decade. The question then must be asked: If fighting games’ focus on grassroots tournaments has helped to grow their fan base, why is StarCraft a void for local tournament coverage? While there are many impressive local tournaments held all over the globe (LAN ETS, UCSD Winter Game Fest, The Edmonton Classic all come to mind), there is an overall lack of effort from eSports figures in making local tournaments a more recognizable phenomenon. It seems illogical that these figures, who pride themselves on helping eSports ascend from obscurity into the

Image left by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com

After a tumultuous year for StarCraft II as an eSport, it's useful to take time to assess where the game stands in terms of current fan base, and where there is room to grow. For months now, debates have been raging about how to ensure that StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm will reinvigorate and progress Blizzard's largest strategy series into a bigger, more mainstream eSport.

be, “How?” First, ask yourself if you are someone who has both the time and energy to organize such an event. Clarity Gaming’s CEO Brandon Altman had his beginnings in hosting and organizing local tournaments, and advises those interested that “It’s a very thankless, unappreciated job. I have the utmost respect for those who are able to do it well.” Only look into hosting events if this is your passion, and you are looking more at growing the community than your own name in the world of eSports. Second, assess how many eSports fans there are in the local area. With Barcrafts becoming an international phenomenon, it is easier than ever to connect with gamers who may be interested in playing or spectating a regional tournament. Once you have established that there is an interested player base, it is time to start organizing an event.

With Barcrafts becoming an international phenomenon, it is easier than ever to connect with gamers who may be interested in playing or spectating a regional tournament.

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Image top by Hampus Andersson, bottom by Carl Oscar Aaro

“mainstream”, do not make more of an effort to include the lowly masses into competitive StarCraft II. The fighting games community has proven that the way to get more people excited about playing and watching video games is by making them as inclusive as possible, and local tournaments can do just that. While a StarCraft II player stuck in gold league may be hesitant to spend thousands of dollars to fly to an MLG and compete in a bracket full of professional players, they are far more likely to spend a fraction of that amount to compete against friends from school or the local community. Giving someone an opportunity to test their skills in a local tournament without the obscene pressure of a premier event is ideal for growth; it keeps players interested and involved. And promoting this kind of sociality is the best way to draw in players who may be new to the game. Especially in a community renowned for being helpful to new players, these local tournaments are an excellent chance for new players to connect with the enormous community that exists for StarCraft II, and to get more involved. As LAN center owner and tournament promoter Joe Altamirano of Dizelan Frag Center puts it, “LAN centers have been a dying breed for the last three or four years, so seeing people playing video games in this format, where they are seated within the same vicinity as their opponents, is a big kick for those experiencing it for the first time.” Tournament organizers see it as a victory when someone new to eSports is inducted to the faith through their tournament. Not only are they helping to grow their tournaments in the future, but there is a personal satisfaction in seeing the growth of eSports as a whole. Joe smiles as he says, “It’s personally worth it to me when I see people having a good time.” Making StarCraft a more inclusive activity on the regional level will be instrumental in keeping the game relevant in a market dominated by free-to-play games. The only way to make a positive difference in this process is for more people to get involved in organizing and promoting tournaments in their area. To those reading this and thinking that they want to help to grow competitive StarCraft, the big question should now

10 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

Images by Hampus Andersson

Get in contact with local LAN centers in your area. More often than not these facilities are excited to host events. Not only are grassroots tournaments near to their own passion for popularizing video games, but these tournaments can be damn good business. Be sure to assess the resources necessary to host your event: enough gaming stations to go around, food and drinks, and a computer to run a bracket on. Accounting for your resources before talking with LAN centers is a great way to make yourself look professional and organized, boosting your chance of establishing a positive relationship with management. And if you’ve searched the map and found no LAN centers nearby? Try looking into universities or other establishments that may have a ballroom. One of Southern California’s biggest PC LAN tournaments, the Winter Games Fest, is held out of two conference rooms at the University of California San Diego. The event is bring-yourown-computer (BYOC), meaning there is no hardware responsibility on the organizer, save power and internet connection. After securing a location to host an event, whether it be your garage or a convention center, it’s time to advertise. Possibly the biggest issue in the regional scene is the lack of a centralized place to advertise an event. While community sites such as Teamliquid and Reddit are available, it seems a matter of luck more than anything if people find your event. TL requires constant bumping to be seen by the common forum browser, and Reddit suffers the whims of democracy, which decides the fate of a tournament’s advertising. The best way to advertise is all of the above; a combination of the aforementioned, and talking to as many StarCraft fans as possible, however possible. As a side note, be sure to get your event

whitelisted by Blizzard. As stated on the Blizzard site, “if Battle.net detects large numbers of StarCraft II players trying to connect from the same IP, the IP range could get temporarily blacklisted, making it impossible for your event’s participants to play.” The process for whitelisting your event is simple; head over to http:// eu.battle.net/en/tournament/ for details. Finally comes the actual tournament, which will be a stressful experience. Be sure to register on a bracket processing website before the event, with an idea of what kind of format you will run. If GSL-style group play seems to be the best way to do it, familiarize yourself with how to add names and update scores on the website. The most commonly used bracket websites in the competitive gaming scene are challonge. com and binarybeast.com, which offer both bracket and group play functionality. On top of organizing brackets, it is important to anticipate mishaps, like internet malfunctions or hardware malfunctions. Having a ready course of action before these things go wrong is always prudent, but these things are unpredictable. Channel your inner leadership skills and the event will run as smoothly as possible. While running a LAN tournament seems daunting, the effects it will have on the competitive StarCraft scene are astounding. Introducing more players to the excitement of eSports amid an atmosphere that promotes social, yet fierce competition is imperative for the long-term growth of StarCraft. After a successful regional tournament, there is a sense of personal satisfaction that you are indeed making a positive difference for eSports in your region. The people you will meet, the experiences you will have, the community you will foster, makes all the stress worth it. GLHF

Get in contact with local LAN centers in your area. More often than not these facilities are excited to host events

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MINE OVER MATTER

TIMOTHY TANG DRAWS UP A BLUEPRINT OF DESTRUCTION TO COMBAT THE ZERG MENACE

of competitive Heart of the Swarm has been an exciting time for StarCraft II. Every match-up has seen dramatic shifts, but none moreso than Terran versus Zerg. As players queue up on the ladder, it is important to discuss how this matchup is currently played and how it will evolve over the years. New units and changes to existing units give Terrans a plethora of new opportunities; improved medivacs add harassment options, and widow mines have almost completely replaced tanks as the goto unit for space control. The swarm also has a bevy of brand new options: improved mutalisks, swarm hosts, and vipers make lair-tech armies much more versatile than the old mass infestor style. Taking full advantage of the new units, Terran players have learned to effectively draw incoming Zerg attacks into widow mine kill-zones, much like how marine/ tank works. The mines thin out the Zerg by targeting priority targets like clumps of banelings or mutalisks. Natural chokes are a huge benefit to bio-mine play when forcing head-on confrontations. This sort of direct engagement works quite well on smaller maps with less open space, such as Bel’shir Vestige, where one is able to set deadly traps on the many ramps that lead to important expansions. Larger maps like Whirlwind benefit drop play much more due to the the beginning

12 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

THE RETURN OF TERR AN

As with any non-mirror matchup, there will be a “stronger” race, a player with access to a stronger arsenal at a given point of the match. If we look at HotS TvZ, there’s a tendency for Terran to set the tempo in the mid-game. Using drop play and small groups of marines, Terrans can obliterate drones and hatcheries if there is no proper answer, especially in the mid-game where spine and spore crawlers are few in number. Speed medivacs make mutalisks a vital component to keep up with the upgraded harassment, while widow mines have the potential to deal massive damage to both air and ground with minimal investment.

Z E RG COMP OS I T ION

thy enemy : While zergling/ mutalisk armies are popular in the current meta, is it the only option for Zerg? It directly responds to Terran drop play. Infestors, know

though powerful in the later stages, do not offer a fast response to multiple threats. Roach/hydra has seen some use but falls quickly to tanks without at least a couple of vipers to support. Though Zerg players may struggle to deal with splitting against widow mines for the early portion of the game, ultralisk/infestor transitions are terrifying against the current Terran meta; with no long-range siege, the power of the infestor is as uncanny as ever in the late game. Even against marauders, the buff ultralisks got in HotS makes them extremely powerful against any sort of bio army.

T HE E A R LY G A ME

Most Terrans find success with some sort of fast-expand oriented build, usually employing hellions or hellbats for early map dominance. This goes for any kind of Terran play, Bio or Mech; the strength of these fire breathing transformers proves valuable in both its harassment potential and in the defense of newly established

Artwork by Blizzard Entertainment

sheer space an army must cover to defend base locations.

bases. While players should strive to dish out some damage with these units where possible, their real benefit is the time it gives the Terran player to set up a decent two to three base economy, and in providing intel on what Zerg opponent’s opening. See some roaches encroaching with no third base? Time to get those bunkers up. See something greedy like a fast lair and fully saturated bases? Get greedy yourself or attempt to roast a few of those drones. You really only have to watch out for those roach/baneling timings that hit before your first two medivacs are out. Careful scouting is key to stopping these pushes, and the most dependable response is to favor tanks before mines.

A PROLONGED TERR AN MID - GAME

As soon as Terran gets up reactors on their starport and factories, they can become too comfortable - almost complacent. The one problem Terran players are facing right now is their inability or unwillingness to transition from bio. There have been a few games in the GSL (eg. Keen vs. Shine/ Symbol, Taeja vs. KangHo Ro32) where we have seen Terran stick to bio-mine well into four and five bases, all the while stockpiling enough gas to fill a whole geyser. As the Zerg gets up to vipers and swarm hosts, it’s time to start planning on using some of those reserves. Vikings and ravens are essential to stop vipers from using blinding cloud, and the natural detection capabilities in conjunction with the utility of hunter seeker missiles makes the raven a criminally

underused spellcaster. A transition into ravens or battle cruisers seems obvious, especially against an ultralisk-based army. It seems that once a Terran player gets into a high-tempo groove, they do not switch off the aggression. Constant aggression is a strength of bio play, where Terran can constantly trade in small numbers where they will have better engagements, but that is not to say that it is the end-all answer to late-game. We have seen Sky Terran work before at the first HotS MLG. Bomber and Thorzain were the first to drag Terran vs. Zerg out to an extraordinary length, focusing on an endgame fleet. As Zerg Players adapt against Bio compositions, so will Terrans eventually reach the next stage of the meta, where they will not find themselves stuck fighting a late-game army of ultralisk/infestor with a mid-game force of Bio. So why are Terran Players finding themselves in this awkward late-game position? A number of factors are at play.

The one problem Terran players are facing right now is their inability or unwillingness to transition from bio.

T HE FAC TOR S AT PL AY

1) Bio is better on the offensive As a Bio player, you’ll want to play aggressively to take advantage of their fast production time. Bio is great at dealing tons of damage in smaller groups. You’ll almost never want to wait for a maxed army before moving out with marine/marauder - not only is it harder to micro Bio in large clumps, but the shorter the game is, the more chance you’ll be winning with Bio anyway, before ultralisks are on the map. GLHFMAG.COM

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As previously mentioned, maps like Whirlwind are the perfect place to be aggressive, constantly trading as you secure more bases. This also lets you know the tech your opponent possesses. Keep track of how far they are from hive tech, their melee/ carapace upgrades, and how many bases they have. Place a marine or supply depot at each untaken base to let you have a better sense of the map. 2) Widow mines aren’t great at defense The mines’ strength comes from both their massive single damage output, and their surprise factor. Mines are terrible for defending key points because their placement is easy to guess. With correct execution, overseers and zergling suicide missions are more than enough to nullify the explosive threat. Attempt to position your mines as far out into your opponent’s territory as possible. This is where you’ll have the best chance on doing some real damage. It will force the Zerg to build overseers and spores, just to defend their expansions. If you only group your mines near your army, then their location will be no surprise to your opponent. 3) Tanks are weak to vipers This seems to be the biggest factor in limiting the Terran end-game, the fact that there are no siege tanks employed in the current meta of Terran versus Zerg. Why haven’t we seen tank/marine? Because vipers are incredibly strong against tanks, able to pull them from fortified positions, or disable them with Blinding Cloud. Tanks are one of the best defensive units in the game, but vipers can easily displace the core to this previously impregnable stronghold. That said, tanks are great in certain situations, such as combating roaches and hydras. Because tanks fire more often 14 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

than their tiny burrowed counterparts, siege mode does great on both offense and defense. Just beware that you’ll need vikings and ravens to deal with the inevitable vipers. All of this adds up to a couple of notes on Terran Bio play: - Be aggressive - Avoid engaging on your opponent’s side of the map - Multi-pronged attacks are great - Don’t wait for max supply

B ACK TO B A S I C S

Are Terrans doomed to go Marine/ Marauder in every battle against Zerg? Will Mech ever become viable outside of Terran versus Terran? Such questions seem so easy to answer right now, but the metagames of StarCraft are mercurial and difficult to predict. The WoL meta underwent profound changes in its first two years of competitive play, and HotS will be no different. With balance tweaks, both Blizzard and the community of pros and amateurs have the tools to forge new tactics and strategies. The matchup favors Terran right now, with players like Innovation making a fool of every Zerg he encounters. For now, with perfect control and macro, bio-mine compositions offer large damage output, where the value of a unit is determined so heavily upon a player’s ability to kite and position properly. It is an exciting match-up to spectate, with pitched battles one after the other offering carnage for casters to color; and this is only the beginning. As players begin to develop timings for tech transitions into ultralisks, ravens and beyond, we shall wait to see the true end-game of this matchup. GLHF

The mines’ strength comes from both their massive single damage output, but also their surprise factor.

MAKE WIDOWS NOT MINES QUANTIC.MASSAN OUTLINES THE SWARMâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S BEST OPTIONS AGAINST BIO-MINE TERRANS

the release of Heart of the Swarm, many feel that the Zerg have been weakened, especially in comparison to their Terran foes. According to the Team Liquid Progaming Database as of May 1st, the win rate for Zerg has been below 45%, which suggests that Terrans still hold the high ground versus Zerg. However, this 45% is a big step up from the March figures, in which the Zerg versus Terran win rate was only 40.8%. This means that Zerg players have been strong versus Terran players lately, and this win rate will continue to rise as Zerg players further optimize and structuralize their play, since Zerg is a reactive race. In fact, as of May 16th, Zerg shows 53% overall win rate against Terran in WCS premier divisions. The swarm is striking back against Terrans, and you can do the same. since

GE NE R A L

The go-to strategy for Terrans facing Zerg opponents is a heavy bio-mine style. The strength of a bio-mine composition comes from its burst damage per second, as well as the survivability conferred by medivacs.

Widow mines will deal a burst area of effect damage to a target area, and the remaining ground forces will do consistently high damage. To deal with this, a Zerg player must focus on anti-widow mine micromanagement instead of the old standby tactics of surround and overwhelm. This micromanagement means not only avoiding clumped groups of units in the front, but also using units to guide widow mine fire back onto the Terran army. Keep in mind that widow mines do as much damage to Terran forces as to the swarm. [hyperlink: http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=qpfeqv5YqsY].

E A R LY G A ME

Early game ZvT is a war of economy. A Zerg must strive to have higher economy in order to have greater production capability in the mid to late game, and Terrans will attempt to apply pressure in order to prevent this. Terran harassment usually comes in the form of reapers into hellions, or early drops. Either way, it can be stopped with either speed lings or roaches. While employing the minimum required defense to hold Terran GLHFMAG.COM

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16 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

and Armor timing push. Upgrades are vital throughout the matchup, and you should continue to prioritize their research whenever they are available.

MID - G A ME

If the early game was all about economy, the mid-game is all about having vision. Being able to see the Terran army marching across the map, or spotting medivacs ahead of drops can decide who prospers in the late game. Not reacting to drops in time or having your army off the saddle for a major battle can deal the finishing blow to your games. Proper overlord placement and creep spread will reveal your enemy’s movements and allow you to react accordingly. Every possible path of attack that your opponent can take, including drops paths, should be in vision of an overlord, a creep tumor, or else a stray zergling. Knowing is more than half the battle.There are two forms of harassment a Terran player can do at this phase, before the infrastructure for a 3-base economy is completed. The first is by dropping at multiple locations at once, and the other is to push head on. Typically, you will be dealing with 2-3 medivacs and a ground army. Overseers will

Proper overlord placement and creep spread will reveal your enemy’s movements and allow you to react accordingly.

Artwork by Blizzard Entertainment

harassment, every larva should be spent for drones, until 3-base mineral saturation with 4 gas geysers to support a lair-tech transition. Once this saturation is accomplished, larvae should be used for combat units, to more ably swat away the Terran pressure. To stop hellion reaper harassment with speed lings, having creep spread that reaches to your third base is pivotal. I recommend having a spine crawler to protect the area between your natural and third, or else two additional queens. Extra queens cost more, but will also help to deal with drops, due to their ability to attack medivacs. Remember that you do not need to defend the hatchery structure at the third base, but rather the mineral line near it. It’s relatively easy to surround hellions with lings once they come into the mineral line. Although roaches are a direct counter to hellions, hellions can easily slip into mineral lines and ruin your economy. Make sure you have roaches defending both the natural and third, and make as many roaches as you see hellions. As you approach mid-game, get double evolution chambers and start the Melee Attacks and Ground Carapace upgrades. Faster upgrades will help against the Terran’s possible 2-2 Infantry Weapons

play an important role in your army composition. Once widow mines are revealed, keep a minimum of two overseers with your main army and hotkey a third in with your mutalisks once the flock has reached a strength of ten or more. Against drop plays you want to have lings and mutalisks and use mobility to deny the harassment. Against a straight-ahead push you want to have good amount of banelings to melt marines and widow mines before they inflict critical damage. Regardless of this harassment, a Zerg should take a 4th base as soon as the Terran takes their 3rd. Terrans will likely take a 3rd base as soon as the first wave of harassment is over, meaning Zergs can begin to cautiously saturate a 4th base and prepare for the late game. If harassment never comes, lay down baneling landmines and creep tumors for more efficient engagements. Baneling mines are most useful if they can cover every attack path your opponent might take; unused mines can be reintegrated with the main army once their movements have been spotted. Burrowing them nearer to the Terran’s base is ideal, but not always possible. As a rule of thumb, baneling mines are best set in areas of the map over which you exercise control.

L AT E G A ME

During the late game Terran players can easily convert their minerals into orbital

commands and mules, and will have a bigger overall army supply, whereas Zerg players won’t be able to create an equally formidable army without forgoing his or her income. This forces Zerg players to either maintain a high income and trade army for army, or to accumulate a bank of resources and convert drones into static defenses. Either way, the goal of the late game is to limit your Terran opponent to a 3-base economy while you maintain a 4-base economy. But the difficulties of limiting the Terran are not all one must contend with; Zerg players also must defend their own mining bases at all costs, otherwise the game will soon be over due to the lack of reinforcements. For example, if Terran player is running on a 4-base economy with his main base nearly mined out, a Zerg player must do everything in his power to prevent the Terran player from expanding further, while also securing his own 5th base, since a Zerg’s main base will also be mined out soon after. One must predict the upcoming economic struggle and react accordingly. The hive should have started after your tenth mutalisk, and the ultralisk cavern can begin immediately upon the hive’s completion. While ultralisks do a superb job at handling marines, marauders with medivac support do the same to ultralisks. Getting a few infestors to lock down marauders is very helpful at this stage. Try to keep the medivac count low by keeping mutalisks

alive, and replace dead ones with corruptors. Corruptors not only do a superb job at destroying well-upgraded medivacs, but also fail to melt away under fire from marines’ gauss grinders. In addition to the under-utilized corruption ability, they also force viking production and prevent Terrans from going pure medivac/marauder to deal with ultralisks. The swarm is striking back with a vengeance. By focusing on anti-widow mine micromanagement and countering early Terran pressure, we can subdue Terrans and their widow mines, and bring the Dominion to its knees. The strength of bio-mine was a passing blip, and as the metagame is overcome, Zerg play will only become stronger. Stick to the basics, and victory will be yours. GLHF

As a rule of thumb, baneling mines are best set in areas of the map over which you exercise control.

A heated battle between Zerg and Terran. While the Terran seemingly has the upperhand, the battle is not yet over.

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ALEKSEY KRUPNYK OFFSTAGE WITH WHITE-RA By Chris Bizzell

The date is October 7th, 2011. The crowd erupts as White-Ra saunters onto the stage. He has just defeated IdrA in his first match as reigning champion of the IGN Proleague.

Image by Rikard Söderberg

THE AUDIENCE IS ENTHRALLED WITH EVERY

word that he says and even the interviewer comments that he just “gets applause for everything.” He is a star to these eager spectators. However, underneath this mask of Special Tactics, he is simply Aleksey. Fans of StarCraft II tend to put players up on pedestals. To us, they aren’t Greg, Dario, or Chris. They are IdrA, TLO, and HuK. We don’t try to imagine what it must have felt like the first time they played a game of StarCraft. We don’t picture them losing to their first cannon rush. We don’t imagine the mundane parts of their life. Yet it’s these parts of their lives that are most fascinating. It was only after the blue background of Skype faded away and I saw the man sitting in front of the webcam that I began to notice this. The image that glowed before me was a room like so many others. The walls were painted a cream color with grey Victorian wallpaper hanging behind the bed.

Black curtains hung in front of the windows, completely blocking out the sun. Jackets were draped across the back of his black office chair. However, the most interesting thing about this picture in front of me was the shirt Aleksey was wearing. It was the same one he had on when he was streaming the night before, meaning he must have either slept in his shirt that night, or perhaps didn’t even sleep at all. It’s these nuances that give character to a player and makes them human. When we learn about how they got into gaming, what they do in their free time, or gain insight into their personal relationships, we begin to understand the person behind the screen name. We begin our interview with how Aleksey got into the game that became his career. He was passionate about gaming throughout his school years. Like many of us, he would even miss class because he was so enthralled with the games he was play-

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ing. He was a fan of strategy games such as Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, Civilization, and Age of Empires. When asked what drew him into the real-time strategy genre, he replied “You need to think all time. You can control an entire army or just one unit.” Not having internet at the time, Aleksey played with his friends at a small PC club in Odessa, his hometown in Ukraine. One day a friend came in with a copy of StarCraft, claiming it was a “new hit.” The group looked over the game and began toying with its different multiplayer modes. After many hours with the game, the group proclaimed it to be “very interesting” and thought that it would be “something really, really great.” During Aleksey’s time as a rookie, he

the group bought a second computer, and his apartment became the group’s StarCraft headquarters. They set the computers up on LAN, and groups of five or six huddled around this setup for twelve to fourteen hours a day. Despite this intense practice for his first large tournament, nothing could prepare Aleksey for the huge audience that awaited him. Stage fright is a common experience. Most of us have experienced nervousness while performing in front of others for the first time. In 2002, Aleksey was struck by this feeling during his World Cyber Games run. It was the first tournament where he played on stage and he recalls being unable to get comfortable during those games.

When asked [why he shares his personal life on Facebook], he said he wanted his fans to get an inside view of his life. He wants to show his personality to his fans and make them

went through many adjustments. He started his StarCraft experience as a Terran player. When he first started playing against friends, Aleksey was a fan of rushing his opponents. It wasn’t until he and his friends made an agreement not to rush each other that they were finally able to learn the later game units. Eventually, he and his friends felt they were good enough to go to a competition, but tournament play would prove to be much harder than the group envisioned. Although most competitions now are 1v1 based, Aleksey’s first tournament was a 2v2 event. Without a great deal of practice against early rushes, he and his partner lost early on after getting rushed by two Zerg players. This made Aleksey and his friends start practicing even more. One member of 20 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

When asked if it still affects him now, he said he is fine and that “you just need experience” in order to overcome it. When asked about the differences in his ability now and when he was younger, Aleksey replied saying that when you are younger, you can train a lot more and practice for each and every map. “You can work like machine,” he explained. However, when you’re older, you have to think a lot more and “use [your] wisdom.” Aleksey attributes his decline in practice time to him gaining new perspectives on life as he’s grown older. When asked to explain further, he stated “Life doesn’t stop. I want to live in the real world, too.” He said that if he was younger, he wouldn’t need to think about family. As well as being older

Image by Cody Schroeder

see that he is more than just a player.

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22 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

Image courtesy Aleksey Krupnyk

* HTTP :// WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/WATCH?V=PZR5YMD1YW0

than most professional gamers, Aleksey also differentiates himself from the norm by being one of the few married pro-gamers. When asked what this was like, he said “It’s not easy because you should spend time with your family.” For Aleksey, practice and tournaments can hinder his ability to spend time with his wife, but they find ways to make it work. For instance, they try to go together to Aleksey’s international tournaments. He noted that “when we go together, my wife tries to take me to interesting places around the town [we] are in.” When asked if he noticed an impact on his play when she is there, he said “It’s hard to say. If you lose, she try and say some good words.” However, he knows that he always has support from her, no matter where she is. Along with spending time with his wife, Aleksey has many other hobbies. As you may have deduced from his infamous swimsuit picture (see left), Aleksey is an avid swimmer. He is also an advocate of sau-

nas, an activity he tries to do at least once or twice a week. But what he likes most is cooking. When asked what makes cooking so enjoyable for him, he said he loves the smell. Aleksey also mentioned he loves cooking chicken, beef, and pork and has an array of marinades. Perhaps even more than the cooking itself, he enjoys the excuse it gives to invite people to his house for a dinner party. And it’s not just his friends with which he shares his passion of cooking; Aleksey’s YouTube channel contains a video called ADVICES FROM WHITE-RA - HEALTHY FOOD* where he shares a quick and nutritious meal with his fans. This isn’t the first time Aleksey has shared his personal life with his fans. In fact, Aleksey’s Facebook fan page looks strikingly similar to a personal Facebook profile. He shares everything from vacation photos and videos, to funny personal stories, and even pictures sent in by his fans. When asked what makes him do this, he said he wanted

his fans to get an inside view of his life. He wants to show his personality to his fans and make them see that he is more than just a player. Even with as many fans as Aleksey has, we have to realize that he is simply a man. To quote Sean “Day[9]” Plott, “...more often than not, personalities are viewed not as real people with varying sides, but as fictional characters.” To most, White-Ra is just the ever-cheerful Ukranian master of Special Tactics who will always “make expand, then defense it.” However, we must understand that he is much more than the character we project onto him. He has a relatable, familiar story of how he fell into his career. He has facets of his life that few of us will ever get to see. Not only is Aleksey a professional gamer, he is a chef, a husband, a swimmer, a friend, and so much more. He is human, just like all of us. GLHF

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GOSU LOUNGE Gamers of the western world tend to be a solitary bunch. The stereotype of the cloistered gamer, retiring for days on end in front of a glowing screen, is rooted in the uncomfortable reality that gaming lacks the physical, external sorts of interaction enjoyed by other pastimes.

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he United States, in particular, lacks the kind of vibrant LAN café culture that engenders local gaming communities. This is a shame, because we need these local communities if we are ever going to normalize gaming and produce the kinds of pro-gaming talent seen in Korea and abroad. Meet Aaron Oak and Julie Wagness. They’re young entrepreneurs pursuing their dream of opening their own business together. Bright, sincere, and passionate about eSports, they want to foster the Seattle gaming community with their upcoming business, Gosu eSports Bar and Lounge. Somewhere between a sports bar, a rec center, and a boxing gym, Gosu would be a home for eSports in the Seattle area, and provide a gathering point for a nascent community desperate for a sense of realworld connection. Seattle has seen a dramatic increase in the number of businesses catering to classically “geek” pursuits. Two businesses, Card Kingdom and Gamma Ray Games, have experienced dramatic success by creating spaces for tabletop gaming and roleplaying communities. Watching groups of adults gather to play these games over pints of beer, one has difficulty understanding why this was ever considered the province of the socially inept outcast. But part of the success of these communities, and their attendant businesses, has to do with the inherent sociality of the games, something which eSports, and StarCraft in particular, struggles to achieve. With Gosu Lounge, Oak and Wagness hope to produce a similar success by

By: Ryan Kelly

providing a physical space for eSports, where gamers can create connections beyond the sort made in battle.net forums. Oak explains the setup, “We’ll have ten computers, minimum, so that we can have 5-on-5’s for Dota and League of Legends. People will be encouraged to bring in whatever keyboards or mice they want to use, but we’ll have some available, of course.” In addition to a small bevy of gaming consoles and comfortable seating, what more could you ask for? A bar, of course. A bar replete with HDTVs showing replays and live tournaments, making it Seattle’s first permanent BarCraft location, in the very city that hosted the world’s first BarCraft. Other eSports games would be featured, of course, but with the new WCS tournament structure, there is a greatly increased potential for BarCrafts. And as much fun as it is to gripe on the internet about this or that WCS storyline, wouldn’t you prefer to do it in a bar with your friends? For those that want to proceed past spectating, Oak and Wagness plan to have coaches on staff and available to mentor anyone from beginner to expert levels. Oak tells me, “I think that’s one of the things I’m most looking forward to: having people come in and take beginner lessons on how to play Dota or StarCraft or whatever. Friends of mine from around the country are moving to Seattle and they all have backgrounds in eSports. Each employee is not only going to be working at the bar, but also doing something else like coaching.” Wagness follows this up, “We want to avoid any elitism. And we want to make it an open environment where anyone can just come

Image by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com

AND THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY IN AMERICAN GAMING

By: Ryan Kelly in and learn, experienced players and new players alike.” Given the excitement these plans elicit from local gamers, one must wonder: why hasn’t this happened already? Why aren’t our major cities littered with Gosu Lounges and other places for players to meet and interact with each other? It certainly isn’t because the market can’t support them: League of Legends boasts significantly more active daily users than Instagram. Valve Software sponsors The International, the premier Dota 2 tournament, with a prize pool of 2.2 million dollars (and growing), and it’s even held in Seattle. The PAX Prime convention also takes place in Seattle, and gamers from across the globe will annually swoop in to snatch up all available tickets in a matter of moments. The market is teeming with regularly employed adults, desperate to spend their disposable incomes on eSports. Perhaps the largest hindrance to businesses like Gosu Lounge is the remaining stigma associated with video games; that it is an anti-social and possibly unhealthy pursuit. And explaining eSports to someone who has never played a video game spawns a conversation as unwieldy as if you were trying to explain baseball to someone who had never heard of athletic recreation. The irony is that places like Gosu would do so much to socialize the gaming community that the stereotype would fall limp and dead in the face of the reality of normal people meeting up and enjoying eSports together. This is why Oak and Wagness’s project is so important. Spaces like Gosu Lounge would have an enormous impact on normalizing gaming in American culture,

and create greater emphasis on local communities. With an increase in local community, there would be an increase in local competition. From there, an increase in regional competition, and then national competition. A new emphasis and support for local gaming communities is vital, not just if we want to see a foreigner win the WCS, but if we want to see eSports thrive and achieve the sort of popularity we know it deserves. Many gamers might talk, pie-eyed and longingly, about how they would start their own eSports bar, like kids imagining how incredible their tree house is going to be. Oak and Wagness actually committed themselves to it, quitting jobs and dipping into savings in order to convince investors and find a location. At first, it went swimmingly: an initial investor soon attracted several more, and Gosu Lounge was fully funded with room to spare. It was a pyrrhic victory however; the initial investor backed out at the last minute, and the others were contingent upon his involvement. Now plans for Gosu Lounge have been postponed, and the project hangs in limbo. The seemingly obvious solvency of their business is lost on banks and traditional lending agencies, so instead Oak and Wagness must cast about for fresh investors or corporate sponsors. However, the time to do so is dwindling. “We’ve put all our savings, everything we have into this,” Oak says. “Realistically we have about two or three months left before we have no choice but to put everything on hold.” GLHF

Many gamers might talk, pie-eyed and longingly, about how they would start their own eSports bar, like kids imagining how incredible their tree house is going to be. Oak and Wagness actually committed themselves to it.

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ALL-IN FOR THE WIN TH E F INE A R T OF AGGR E S S ION By: Tim “TangSC” Clark

ikewise, I frequently heard this advice: “You must avoid gimmicky, all-in styles that will hinder your mechanics and development.” But this advice never helped me. Since season 1 of Wings of Liberty, I have been an advocate of aggressive playstyles - not only because they are the most fun, but because an active style (rather than a passive style) is the optimal way to improve multitasking, mechanics, and mindset. Now I should mention my own bias: I first learned Zerg by repeating the 10-Pool in team games, an “all-in” style where you keep only 10 workers mining minerals to constantly produce speedlings. And for about two months, that’s all I did - and I mean that’s all I did. I made master in all my team divisions using the most simple but crisp early speedling attacks. I can say with complete confidence that even though most games ended between the 6-8 minute mark, this was when I experienced the most essential and rapid improvement in fundamental mechanics - multitasking, injecting, hotkeying/control grouping, rallying, zergling micro, etc. Another important stage in my development was when I started using

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variations and transitions. I still wanted to do my optimized speedling build, but I began to realize situations where it wasn’t as effective. A basic example is against 2 Terran opponents who just wall-off (making early zerglings useless). Sometimes I would eventually win if my ally could break the wall, but there was no advantage to getting the zerglings so early - it made more sense to delay the Pool a bit and hit at a later timing. So I optimized two speedling variations a 10-Pool speedling build that hit at 5:00 (with less zerglings) and a 14-Pool that hit at 6:00 (with more zerglings). And at the start of every game I would calculate - based on matchups, maps, opponents - which of the two speedling attacks I would use. Win rate went up. Then I realized that even with the new and optimized timing, there were situations where zerglings just weren’t useful anymore (like if my opponent had too many hellions). So, I started to practice roach and baneling follow-ups, and I optimized these transitions to the same level of precision as the 10-Pool. Again, win rate went up. Finally, I started to really branch out; I often still opened with the speedling builds, but in some situations/ matchups I would skip the zerglings and

Image by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com

When I started playing StarCraft II, I heard the same advice over and over in professional casts, forums, and chat channels: “You must learn to play a straight-up, standard-macro style to develop your mechanics.”

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One of the most important skills that is improved with an aggressive style is multitasking. The ability to look away from your base while maintaining production is absolutely essential in SC2, and anytime you’re attacking you’re forced to strain your multitasking.

open with 1-2 base roach and baneling timings. By the time I stopped doing team games and moved into 1v1s, I was ranked top 10 globally in 2v2s, 3v3s, and 4v4s and I had a relatively complex system of 1-2 base timing attacks/transitions/all-ins that I would cycle between, depending on the situation/matchup/etc. I applied the same approach to 1v1s, and it proved both effective and entertaining. So as you can see, in my early days I took baby steps, but I made sure I cleared each step before moving to the next one. When I chose any build, any timing, any transition, I would focus on the economic steps 100% until it was as perfect as it could be. Once the build was optimized, I would practice it over and over until the execution and unit control became second nature, and then I would do the same for the variations and follow-up transitions. I rarely practiced standard macro and instead relied on some 15-20 timing attacks/variations/transitions. It may seem like this approach would stunt mid and late-game development, but eventually more and more games started making it to the three-four base stage. The goal of being hyper-aggressive isn’t to avoid the mid-game; it’s to improve systematically, starting with the basics. The fact is, to be the best player you can (whether you’re aggressive/all-in player, a standard/macro player, or anything in between), you need to have solid early, mid, and late game fundamentals - but I think that if I had chosen to start with three or four-base styles, I would have been overwhelmed. Even though the builds I chose were simple and even all-in, they still taxed me to the limit of my ability. Many players think that cheesy/all-in styles require less skill than macro styles, but truth is they require different skills. So many players think that you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage in the long run if you don’t 28 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

learn standard macro builds, but there are skills and mechanics that are best-developed with aggressive, even all-in styles. One of the most important skills that is improved with an aggressive style is multitasking. The ability to look away from your base while maintaining production is absolutely essential in StarCraft II, and anytime you’re attacking you’re forced to strain your multitasking. If you don’t actively push yourself and your multitasking, you will not progress as fast as you could. It’s not that a reactive/macro style doesn’t develop multitasking at all—of course it does, you have to scout and defend your opponents’ attacks while keeping up with macro—it’s that an aggressive style forces you to develop multitasking faster. Another advantage to using aggressive styles is what I call the “advantage of the first aggressor.” We all hear about the defender’s advantage and how in an ideal world, the defender will always pull out ahead because of the distance your opponent has to travel. But in the real world, being the firstaggressor is just as much of an advantage—if you can make proper use of it. All StarCraft II players have a plan at the start of each game (I hope). Broadly speaking, you can assume that your opponent wants to do X build to get Y units; and if you can throw a wrench into that X build, it’s going to affect how they get Y units. This seems straight-forward, but it’s incredibly important; builds are about flow, and most players aren’t nearly as comfortable executing even their mostpracticed builds if they’re interrupted and messed with. So if you make the first move and attack, and plan ahead how to transition later, then you’re sticking to your plan and forcing your opponent to deviate from his. It is extremely difficult to play when you’re under pressure, and if you get to the point where you’re calm and confident in

Left: Illustration by Joey Everettt, Top Image by R1ch @ Team Liquid

your timing attacks and transitions, you’ll induce more and more mistakes from your opponent - and you’ll be able to capitalize on these mistakes in a way that wins you the game. One thing that is so interesting about an aggressive style is that the more you experiment with all-ins, the more you will find grey area - builds that you thought were “all-in” that can be transitioned out of. There have been so many games where I opened with, say, a 1-base baneling allin against Protoss, did some significant/ equalizing damage, and moved into the mid-game with neither side knowing who was ahead. Some of the games I transitioned and lost, some of them I transitioned and won. And that’s why the whole notion of an “all-in” is a bit of a problem in Starcraft II: all top-level aggressive players have a followthrough for every attack, no matter how much of a commitment the attack is. Even

in some games where I did these attacks and dealt absolutely no damage, I would always, always, always try another step, another timing attack, another “all-in”. I didn’t know it then, but this was “mindset” training—this taught me to keep my cool in situations where I’m way behind (which is essential regardless of the style you play). Aggressive strategies are fun and effective ways to improve multitasking, mechanics, and mindset – and that is why all-ins are an integral part of StarCraft II for both beginners and professionals. Newer players benefit by first learning and then refining basic builds that force them to be active with their units while managing smaller economies. Experienced players benefit by using their skills and experience to develop their own advanced systems of attacks and variations, blurring the lines of “all-in” with well-planned transitions. Finally, all players benefit by keeping calm and composed in

situations where they’re behind – besides, would you rather leave a game after a failed bust of your opponent’s base, or after they successfully bust yours? Personally, win or lose, I like to make my opponents sweat. So get out there and experiment with some 10 Pools, some Gateway pushes, some Proxy-Raxes. Refine your economy, improve your execution, develop your transitions, and find your own grey area. Thank you for reading and stay aggressive, Tim “TangSC” Clark Team All-Inspiration www.TangStarcraft.com GLHF

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LETS GO TO THE FLOW CHART DAVID JOERG OF GGTRACKER TALKS ABOUT THE IMPROVED REPLAY FILE SYSTEM By: Ryan Kelly

How long have you been working on GGTracker? How many people are on the GGTracker team?

The GGTracker adventure started in January of last year. Currently the team is myself plus Graylin Kim, the creator of the awesome sc2reader replay parser library, on a part-time basis. Along the way several others have pitched in, including Marian Rudzynski, Bernat Fortet, András Belicza, Alex Kam and William Lang. For years I’ve daydreamed about doing something like this. My first RTS was Ancient Art of War, 1984. It was great! My brother and I grew up playing tabletop war games with neighborhood kids. We played Avalon Hill games, Borderlands, Diplomacy, Risk, and we played the computer war strategy games like War in Russia. I went on to learn computer programming, and my brother went to West Point military academy. It was quite a thrill bringing him to MLG Anaheim in June last year. He had never seen Starcraft before. By the end he was standing up in his chair shouting at MKP vs Alicia game 2. Data visualization is another passion of mine. Tufte is the Bible. You may have noticed on Day[9]’s wall Minard’s famous visualization of Napoleon’s march into and out of Russia. A friend sent me the charts 30 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

from Churchill’s war room, which were one of the inspirations for Bernat Fortet’s visual design of GGTracker. My previous work was in automated trading, where we do this kind of stuff day in, day out. In that world, it is taken as obvious that without good stats and charts, you have no idea what’s going on. How did Blizzard approach you about the replay file changes? What sorts of input were they interested in? Can you describe the process of working with them?

While in Anaheim, a mutual friend introduced me to the Starcraft team. We had Mexican lunch and I demoed GGTracker right there next to the nachos. They liked it! It turned out they had been thinking of putting a “combat log” into the replay file, but weren’t sure if they’d ever get the time to work on it. They were also hoping to find a way to share more details of the replay file format with the community. Nine months later, on my birthday and out of the blue, they write to say they are going to share a new parser library with the community, and can we test it? I said, “Hell yeah!” and we got to work on testing. What a birthday present, eh? It took the sting out of turning 40! While we were working on that, they

dropped a second bomb - they were actually going to put the “combat log” into the replay file. They had all kinds of information in there, but it was making the replay file too big. So we went back and forth on what kind of information to include. It was a good collaboration, we floated a lot of ideas and winnowed it down to the best ones. As a thank-you for working with them on the new features, Blizzard offered to put up a post on their blog describing how GGTracker uses the new information. I am very grateful for that. It brought a lot of new people to the site, and they seem to be enjoying it. Blizzard has been great to work with; friendly and very smart, no nonsense, no drama. Can you outline the sorts of changes that were made to the replay files in 2.0.8? What changes are you most excited to see?

With 2.0.8, nearly all the stats you can see in the in-game observer interface are included in the replay file, at ten seconds intervals. That’s how we make charts of your minerals/vespene in bank, and your mineral/vespene collection rate. That’s also how we chart our Resources Lost, and compute your Average Unspent Resources and your Spending Skill.

We also now have, for the first time, the exact birth and death time of every army unit, worker and building, and their location at birth and death time. This allows us to exactly chart the size of your army and your number of workers. We can also determine when major combat is happening, from all the deaths. Finally, we have the location of units when they deal or receive damage. And we have the completion time of upgrades. Actually, it’s overwhelming how much new information we have! I’m probably most excited about the birth/death times and locations, because with that you can compute what the major battles were and their outcome. From that you can build a model of what typically happens in battle based on what units were there and where the fight happened. But honestly there are so many awesome things about 2.0.8. Here’s another one: one reason people use GGTracker is to see their Spending Skill. Before 2.0.8, people had to wait for a few minutes and sometimes up to an hour to see their Spending Skill; the information wasn’t in the replay, we had to get it from Battle.net through a slow and error-prone process. But now it’s instantaneous! I have the GGTracker auto-uploader set up, and now when I finish a game, I tab over to GGTracker and I can see my Spending Skill right away. It can be addictive. For more details about the replay file, see the Tracker Events section of Blizzard’s s2protocol README and the sc2reader code for parsing Tracker Events.

Upload a lot of your games. Looking only at your 1v1 Ladder games, how is your Spending Skill? If your Spending Skill is below your league level, then that’s the first thing to work on. Good macro habits will get your Spending Skill to where it needs to be, and many others have written good articles and made good videos about how to do that. Once your Spending Skill is OK, it’s time to focus on the other aspects of your game. How’s your economy? Do you tend to be ahead or behind of your opponent? How’s your army composition? Does your army composition tend to counter the enemy’s or be countered by it?

But I’m not a Starcraft expert. It’s the Pros and Casters who are the experts. Therefore, the plan is to turn GGTracker into a “platform,” a system where ordinary players like me can subscribe to automated and semi-automated coaching from top Pros and Casters.

What is your vision for the future of GGTracker? What sorts of utilities would you like to add in order to help players improve?

When you get down to it, there are only two questions that matter in Starcraft: 1) why did I lose this game, and 2) how can I get better? I want to develop GGTracker to the point where it can answer those questions. But I’m not a Starcraft expert. It’s the pros and casters who are the experts. Therefore, the plan is to turn GGTracker into a “platform,” a system where ordinary players like me can subscribe to automated and semi-automated coaching from top Pros and Casters. To make up a fictional example, I would love to be able to sign up with Grubby’s auto-coaching service for $X/month and get his tips and suggestions and videos, the ones that are most relevant to my league, my playstyle, and the holes in my game. The customization is the point. Each What sorts of new analysis will these player has a unique set of strengths and changes enable in the future? weaknesses. The ideal training program is Remember that all the unit and building customized and provides regular feedback. birth and death times and locations are in For example, a coach might tell me that there. That includes larva, creep tumors, my big problem is I expand too late - my pylons, you name it. So you can compute average expansion is completed at 9:15 and when the player has zero larva, that’s a larva really it needs to be two minutes earlier. So block. You can measure the creep spread at I go work on that, and after ten games I’m any point in the game, you could compute doing much better. Then the auto system what percentage of the map is covered in kicks in and says “Great job! You nailed creep and see who the best creepers are. it. Next, focus on getting that expansion Integrated with map information, you could well-saturated, you should be aiming build heatmaps of where deaths tend to for 5 minutes from base completion to occur, or where proxies tend to get placed saturation”. and how long they tend to last as a function For another example, let’s say my PvZ is of their location. weak. The system will highlight that and say, “here are some videos and some build How do you recommend players use orders to help you with PvZ. Or if your P GGTracker to improve? What features do v roach/hydra is the big problem, here are you feel are most valuable to see? some tips for P v roach/hydra.” GLHFMAG.COM

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How can Blizzard further improve the replay file system?

What they’ve done with 2.0.8 is going to keep me busy for a long time! I’m a happy camper. But if I could get anything, I’d love to have more information about unit positions. That would make it possible to tell when a player has scouted, and when a drop is in progress. Currently we only know where a unit is if it gives or receives damage. This would make replay files too big, but in a perfect world we would have complete information about every attack, damage dealt and received. We could know, for any battle, how much damage was done by each side and by which units. Then we could do a chart of actual DPS for each army during an engagement! We could say “your army’s

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theoretical max DPS is 850, but look, he kept kiting you and limited you to only 150 DPS, that’s why you lost this engagement.” Can you imagine a live DPS meter during pro matches? How boss would that be! Do

you

have

any

plans

include

multi-replay analysis in future iterations of GGTracker?

Yes, that would be cool! We already do some of that - you can pick a particular matchup and see your Spending Skill, APM and winrate for that matchup. For example, my PvZ Ladder winrate is not great. But certainly we can do a lot more. If anyone has specific suggestions, we run a feedback forum at ggtracker.uservoice. com where people can post and vote on ideas. Is there anything you would like to let the community know about GGTracker?

GGTracker is a labor of love! And an obsession. I hope it helps us all get deeper into the game we love. If you like GGTracker, you can help by telling your friends about GGTracker and subscribing to Pro. Also, If you are a software developer and want to live in New York and hack on GGTracker full time, we should talk! GLHF

We could say “your army’s theoretical max DPS is 850, but look, he kept kiting you and limited you to only 150 DPS, that’s why you lost this engagement.” Can you imagine a live DPS meter during pro matches? How boss would that be!

Image by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com

These are just illustrative examples; the coach would have total control and decide what to prioritize. With automation, the coaching can be customized, and can give immediate feedback. For well-known pros and casters, this would be the most meaningful way for them to interact with their fans. This is all a way off; first we have to add more stats and measurements to the system, so that we have captured all the parts of the game that matter.

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I <3 GAMEHEART: RYAN SCHUTTER TALKS ABOUT CREATING THE BEST OBSERVER UI IN SC2

Though many in the Starcraft community have now seen the Gameheart Overlay, few know Ryan Schutter and his various other projects in the Starcraft community.

hrough hosting charity events with friends, both the “Rumble in the Bronze” in December 2011 as well as the “End of Liberty” event in December 2012 (all donating to Child’s Play), he realized he wanted a more practical interface for spectating games. His countless hours learning and working with the custom map editor led him to create the GameHeart overlay which is now being used by the GSTL, Dreamhack, and SHOUTcraft America tournaments.

minimap. It gave us a huge chunk of space on the right side of the screen for the charity and event logos, as well as an automatically updating ticker that would show the current total donations for the event. But the overlay as people know it was something I started working on around the same time we created GameHeart itself.

the overlay for spectators?

How was “Gameheart” formed?

I think that, just like most people watching Starcraft back in 2010 and 2011, I was watching some major tournaments and in complete awe at how obnoxious their overlays were becoming. It was pretty unacceptable.

When GameHeart was created it was supposed to be a small team that would put on regular player showmatch events. Most of the team was made up of people who had worked on the Rumble in the Bronze the previous year. My job was graphic design and illustration for the event. I became obsessed with the idea of a special spectator overlay, but it was originally planned to be an external program, not a Starcraft custom map. At some point it dawned on me that everything we wanted to do could be done inside of the map editor. There was some debate about the merits of the two different solutions but I felt like the map editor was the way to go so I just started working on it

When did you first start creating the GameHeart overlay?

My first time modifying the default interface was back in 2011 for the Rumble in the Bronze charity event. We needed a lot of space to display extra information and the layout of the default UI made it difficult. All I really did was slide the unit selection panel to the left a bit so it was up against the 34 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

Image by Helena Kristiansson, esportphoto.com

What was it that made you want to change

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even though I wasn’t a programmer. We actually got really far into the preparation stages for our first event. It was to be a showmatch between Shawn “Sheth” Simon and Kevin “qxc” Riley. We had everything ready to go. We had produced a lot of filler content for between matches and had a date set which was fast approaching. We had tip jars where if you donated $5 to a player you could get your message on the stream for everyone to see. We even had an event planned for the end of the showmatch where the top 3 tippers for each player would get to play on their team in a final 4v4 game where Sheth and QXC would have special coaching tools to issue commands to their allies. I really think it was going to be a fantastic event. Unfortunately, MLG announced a qualifier for the same day our event was planned shortly before it was scheduled to happen. Even if we could ask Sheth and QXC to skip the qualifiers for our showmatch (which of course we had no intention of doing) the viewer numbers while trying to compete with MLG would have been hopeless, so we decided to postpone the event. But because the event needed to be on a weekend, as most of our team were volunteers who worked during the week, the next good day to do an event was far down the road. It seemed like there were major events every weekend and it would have been a real struggle for a smaller event to find its place. It was especially difficult at the time because so many major events would not announce dates very far in advance. This is pretty much where our original

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plan for GameHeart fell apart. We had put too many eggs in one basket and then someone drove over our basket with a truck. It is also quite easy when you have a lot of smart and diversely skilled people working on a project for it to grow in scope. Eventually I think it just became too big and stressful and when we had to postpone it nobody was looking forward to another month or two of preparation. So we all just kind of stopped working on it and never scheduled another date for the event. However, I kept working on the overlay because I really felt it was something the scene needed. I kept the GameHeart name because I liked the name and I didn’t know what else to call my overlay, and at that point GameHeart was pretty much down to just me. How has your background in graphic design contributed to your overall goals for this project?

It certainly has contributed in the sense that some of the lessons I learned as a graphic designer have carried over. But as a graphic designer my goal has always been to let my work serve whatever purpose I am designing, rather than the other way around. ‘Form follows function’ and all that. Part of the problem with the overlays tournaments were using up until that time was that each graphic designer working on them seemed like he was trying to impress everyone with his amazing graphic design skills. My goal was to impress everyone with how comfortable and good it felt to watch a game with my overlay. Even now I do not put ornate or elaborate designs into the overlay because all it serves to do is be distracting. People need to be able to watch the game and ignore the interface in the corner of their eye. If you make it ornate or obnoxious they will always have an itch at the corner of their eye while they are trying to watch a bunker rush or a roach push. So I have kept my designs as simple as I could, and they regularly get even simpler. The GameHeart overlay has also given me a desire to consolidate the information on the screen into one area (often the bottom of the screen) so that there are fewer focal points floating around the screen. In the normal observer interface you are looking in the top left to see the production tab, the top right to see resources, the bottom left to see the minimap, the bottom of the screen to see the unit info and the top to see the player names and scores. This felt way too

chaotic. And while the original GameHeart overlay had all of the information at the top of the screen, it has always been my desire to put it at the bottom. And last but not least [my design background] gave me a sense of how to design something for a purpose. The medium we use for watching StarCraft is online streaming. And that medium has a lot of drawbacks. Video compression does not always do StarCraft interfaces any favors, so I was careful to make sure I designed my overlays to work well with video compression and online streaming, so that even people watching on their phones in 240 or 360p would be able to read the supply and resource numbers. Trying to reduce the size of the interface, making it more readable in lower quality streams, and adding simple tools to improve the spectator experience pretty much sums up the goals of GameHeart. Were there any features you considered putting in that you never got around to?

There are some features that we discussed early on as a possibility which I have never got around to working on, though I am getting close now I think. Something like having the interface continuously read a file on the

observer’s computer to show a constantly changing message to the stream. It could be used for things like twitter messages, tip jars, giving the audience information about upcoming matches in the tournament or whatever else. This is definitely coming in the future if I am able to continue working on GameHeart. Another thing I have been working on is a picture in picture system that works entirely in game using a single observer. You can find a video of it in action on the TeamGameHeart youtube channel. I hope to get back to this someday. Similarly, were there any features you tried to create that you could not get to work?

Oh yeah, absolutely! I think the biggest disappointment for me was the ‘health dots’ system which was intended to replace normal health bars. Someone had suggested the system on Reddit or Team Liquid awhile back and it had always been sitting in the back of my brain as something that would be good to do with GameHeart. When I got to it, though, it quickly became clear that the idea was not fully thought out. Yes having little green dots that change color to represent the units health instead of giant bars above their heads was great. But what

was I going to do for shields and energy? I couldn’t have them change color because it would just be confusing. So I decided on making them shrink instead. In fact, I have a little collage I made back then to show off the feature (See image right). While I think it was an awesome improvement for the spectator experience, unfortunately it turned out to be a little too resource intensive. I didn’t want to add anything that might slow down the game for players so I shelved it. I may come back to it someday because I still think it is an awesome idea, and I am a lot more knowledgeable with the editor now than I was then. So I may yet be able to make it work.

Another thing I have been working on is a picture in picture system that works entirely in game using a single observer. You can find a video of it in action on the TeamGameHeart youtube channel. I hope to get back to this someday.

What was one of the biggest challenges in getting your overlay to work the way you wanted it to?

The biggest challenge is definitely the editor. While the editor is a powerful tool, and without it GameHeart wouldn’t be possible, it is also quite frustrating to work with at times. There are a lot of bugs and problems with the editor that have been in it since beta and never been addressed. I think that this is one of the main reasons GLHFMAG.COM

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the StarCraft II custom map scene has been suffering compared to Brood War or Warcraft 3. Another challenge I faced was showing player vision to the GameHeart observers. When you are spectating a game of StarCraft, sometimes you want to know whether a player has seen a structure his enemy has built, whether it’s some proxy barracks he may have just barely walked past without seeing, an expansion they may not know about, or a spire just out of range of a scan. As a normal observer this is no big deal, you press a button and you are now looking through the eyes of the player and can only see what they see, so if they haven’t seen the building it will disappear. Unfortunately in GameHeart the observers are not real observers, but actually fake players who have no units. Blizzard did not build into the editor a way to show one player another player’s vision. So even if you set it so the observer can only see what that player sees, the observer will still see all of the enemy player’s buildings that he had seen before, even if the player he is spectating has not seen them. I was able to overcome this issue with a little creative thinking I am quite proud of. I gave each player an invisible, invincible unit that hovers above their base. This unit has an ability which instantly and automatically adds a behavior (or buff) to any enemy structure that comes into it’s vision. So now when you switch to a player’s vision in GameHeart, it checks to see which enemy buildings do not have this behavior and it hides them from the observer. It was a simple solution to a complex problem that has plagued observer maps for a long time. I know you created this overlay with the hope that tournaments would become interested in it. Did you ever imagine that it would be used by the GSL?

To be honest, when I saw the trailer my friend Matt put together for me for GameHeart 2.0, I really thought I would get pretty much every tournament using it. The feedback was amazing, pretty much every comment on Reddit, Team Liquid, and YouTube was positive and suggesting that every tournament needs to use GameHeart. I knew I had a bit of a battle on my hands though, because Blizzard had announced their own UI tool a couple of months after I had shown off GameHeart 1.0. Their tool was due for release with HotS, which was pretty much exactly when I was releasing 38 G O O D L U C K — H A V E F U N

GameHeart. I would say their UI tool is definitely the biggest obstacle to getting tournaments to use GameHeart, and not just because Blizzard is pressuring tournaments to use their tool either. What they have done with their tool is very smart. It’s a very intelligent approach to the observer interface problem, but it is still very limited. Custom map solutions like GameHeart will always be more powerful, but the Blizzard UI tool will always have the potential to be more practical. I think if they were to allow observers to zoom further out and add in some form of team logo support GameHeart would instantly become obsolete. To be honest I kind of hope they do this because it would free me from having to maintain GameHeart. I did hope GSL would pick up GameHeart and they had definitely planned to use it for GSL. So far they have only been using it for the GSTL, and I think that it is because Blizzard will not allow GameHeart in WCS events. Hopefully after more and more non-WCS tournaments pick up GameHeart and I am able to demonstrate it is safe and stable they will relax this restriction. Their perspective is understandable, but I think it is both sad for me and the community since I don’t feel anyone is creating anything worthwhile with their UI tool yet. And even when someone finally does, it will not have zoom or team logos or any of the other great features in GameHeart. What other projects are in the works for Gameheart?

Nothing is planned at the moment, and I suspect my involvement in the future annual charity events the SC2 community over on the Penny Arcade forums run will be minimal. GameHeart is a lot of work, and I really need to find a job, so I just won’t have as much free time in the future. How many people are part of Gameheart?

Currently it is just me and one other guy: “Ahli” a German map maker who made the awesome Diablo arcade map for SC2. He was creating his own observer interface map for SC2, but with the success of GameHeart he decided it was more worthwhile to help me improve GameHeart than to build a competitive solution. He has been very helpful.

How might you work to improve the Gameheart overlay in the future?

GameHeart still has a TON of room for growth and improvement. Some things I would like to work on in the future are combating hackers using GameHeart (something it already does to an extent), and maybe even a fully automated tournament system where when you play a match in GameHeart it automatically reports the winner and loser to the tournament system, and the system kicks back the next matchups for those players so they know where they need to go next. It would also allow for automatically updating brackets and other awesome things to make organizing tournaments easier. This is something we discussed doing back when I had more partners but never came to fruition. But I would say the main thing I would like to do in the future is adjust GameHeart so that it allows tournaments to create their own completely unique layouts and interfaces easily, and add them to their own maps so I am no longer even necessary for the growth of GameHeart. I don’t think it is all that far from this goal, to be honest. Unfortunately my time is running short: with a mortgage to pay I am going to have to put GameHeart on hold to find a job. Hopefully I will have enough time left to achieve it. If you see me doing a kickstarter or something in the future please consider supporting me! GLHF

The feedback was amazing, pretty much every comment on Reddit, Team Liquid, and YouTube was positive and suggesting that every tournament needs to use GameHeart.

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