Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Blizzard have announced some lovely digital downloads via their online shop. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne cost $20 each (about £10) and Starcraft is up there for $15 (about £7.50). Not bad, but I recall buying the CD version of Starcraft (minus Broodwar, come to think of it) for about £3 off Amazon a while back…

A fascinating little study of Starcraft’s AI by software engineer Shamus Young reveals something you might not have expected from the game:

I’ve been curious about the quirks in the Starcraft AI and I’ve wanted a chance to see them do their thing in a deterministic environment. I learned some surprising things about this ten-year-old gem. While the races themselves are very nearly balanced in the hands of humans, it turns out the AI is a lot better at using some races compared to others.

It turns out, from Shamus’ experiments, the AI are rubbish at playing the Terrans…
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Half the internet is rather excited about finally getting to see Starcraft 2’s Zerg in action. So, here they are, doing what Zerg do best: Zerging.

Seems the game’s being pretty playful about their infamous swarming nature, which should make for good times, and plenty of nightmares soundtracked by the phlegmy sound of chitin being rendered asunder. If that video’s anything to go by, there’s also actually a pretty decent sense of scale to Starcraft 2, which I wasn’t entirely expecting. I do like to zoom my RTS cameras way out.

You can also see the intro cinematic here, but we’re all far too grown-up to care about cutscenes these days, right?

The creativity of the crafting gamers knows no bounds. Behold: the Starcraft Origami.

Via the effervescent Wonderland.