Is there a way to play OGG files in flash without a ton of cpu overhead, and without decoding + re-encoding to mp3?

I don't know. Google is your friend. Or maybe Stackoverflow.

I think I recognize your name as well. I could've very well been a member of this GMPixel you speak of though I remember no such thing. Were Core_12 back then.

MP3s cannot be looped, it's a limitation of the format. Use Ogg Vorbis.

Good luck Be prepared to get soundly thrashed for your first 10 games or so.

Actually I won most of them. I guess I had an edge over the other beginners (for the placement matches) since I've been watching pro StarCraft (2) commentaries for a long time. But god damn I hate playing Zerg; Queen spawn larvae is so micro-frustrating. Also, cloaked banshees get me every time. Even when I see them coming several minutes beforehand.

Also I don't "plan" anything for humanity because I'm not narcissistic enough to think that my actions have any significant influence on humanity at large.

How is that narcissistic? I didn't say I was going to invent the brain interface or build spacecraft, only that someone else will, eventually. It's either that or we sit here on this little planet until another giant asteroid wipes us out or the Sun dies. I design games - I certainly hope I can be of significant value to humanity through that, but it's not me who's gonna get us off this rock.

You brought up good points on the escapism thing; There's two kinds of games. Take, like, Mass Effect, obviously there's nothing competitive about it, it's an experience, like an interactive movie. And then take something like Counter-Strike, obviously I don't play it for the plot :D

and of course the idea that we'll ever not need our bodies is somewhat irrelevant: it won't happen until a bit after we're all dead, so in this world, the skills that matter are what is important to us now, not the skills that will matter in 2050 or 2100. imagine a guy in ww2 saying 'where is all your military might going to go, germany, after war is abolished!' -- it's just irrelevant to the current situation.

You assume we live to be 80-90. But practical immortality is not that far off either. We don't need to prevent dying overnight, just increase our lifespan at a greater rate than expend it. We can already regenerate most organs, I have no doubt that in my lifetime the technology to extend my lifetime becomes available before I run out of it.

I'll be interested in Core's simplified RTS interface ideas when he releases the game that uses them.  Until then, I have no way to judge their validity. So get to it, Core!  I'm looking forward to actually being able to try them out!  XD

I'm working on it, and have for a long time. It's my flagship product, the very first game concept I created as a kid and have been refining ever since. I'm a one man team, at least for the time being, so don't get too excited about any release date

There are people who want to play high-speed twitch-based RTS games. I get that. But I don't, and I think the majority of gamers share my opinion.

I think it's dangerous to assume majorities... but yes, I'm one of them. Let me be clear - I also like twitch games; I play Counter-Strike for crying out loud. But I also like strategy, and in the RTS genre there aren't really any games that emphasize it to the degree I'm wanting for.

Actually, that applies to FPS as well. I stopped playing CS because Team Fortress 2 came along - Less twitch, more tactics and positioning. Only... Then it became all about hats and pay-to-win unlockables and I lost interest. Went back to CS.

Anyway I agree with everything you said - Don't know if you read my previous posts in this thread but I've been proposing designs to address these very issues.



In other news, I went and bought StarCraft 2 anyway. Can't bash a game without actually playing it for real.

Games are always ultimately "pointless" so there's no reason they shouldn't (continue to) emphasize skill sets that have become obsolete IRL.

Well that's where you're gravely mistaken. Games are like tiny universes; They have rules and the goal is to exploit those rules to win. One that has become adept at exploiting rules in systems such as these do better in the real world, which is also a system of rules to exploit. To state that games are pointless means you lack vision. Did you plan on the human race existing on this planet engaging in physical sports until its eventual demise? Games don't emphasize obsolete skill sets, quite the opposite, they emphasize useful skills. That's why people play them. Only, everyone doesn't agree on what's useful - Right now, finger dexterity may be important, but not for many years I think. Direct brain control isn't that far off. And before that we'll likely get eye control where displays are implanted into the retinas and controlled by eye movements.

1. Your units will act stupidly, like how the AI controls units. You will end up having to exert some manual control just to correct the automated controls. That hardly seems to be what you want to achieve.

Maybe Blizzard sucks as programming AIs, but I plan to make my units act intelligently.

2. Your units are so precisely controlled by the AI that there is no reason to manually control the units. The game then becomes just as interesting as opening up a spreadsheet because being responsive is no longer a requirement.

I'd rather play a deeply strategic game on a spreadsheet than some button mashing contest where strategy doesn't even come into play.

I am not sure how I can sincerely address this. Do you lament having to press ctrl and C together in order to copy in Windows? Does factoring in effort costs for pressing one additional button help you with strategy at all? Does pressing an additional button for a command that does not need to be used often hurt strategy somehow?

Thankfully I don't need to copy-paste while strategizing in a war, so it doesn't bother me much. I get paid by the hour when I copy-paste at work. I was under the impression that attack-moves were a fairly frequent order. Could be mistaken, I don't really play SC2.

Wait wait... so attempting to bait, surround, scout or retreat are "exceptions"? So it is not normal for one to attempt to out-maneuver or zone out the opponent in Starcraft 2?

Says who now?

You're the one who said sometimes over and over again. I'm just working off of that. All those examples of yours should be automated anyway. "Baiting" is just an artifact of the stupid unit AI where a single soldier from a group chases after enemies while his buddies mill around oblivious to the fact. Units should cooperate. "Surround" should just come naturally; There's no maneuver where you wouldn't want your zerglings to surround the marines or your stalkers to make a nice concave. Just more shortcomings of the poor AI.

(we are still discussing Starcraft 2 at this point yes?)

Well, not really. I mean all the outlined problems are present in every other RTS as well. StarCraft 2 is just the most recent example in this long period of complete lack of innovation in the genre.

That is quite a work load.

So that's your argument against innovation? Because it's hard?

In Starcraft 2, a lot of things can change on the fly. Maybe you scouted out the opponent and found that they are fielding a unit you need an answer for quickly, or the unit or tech you are researching should be put off for something else. Players will have to cancel their production plans and build something else, and the player may have to cancel the Chrono Boosts and requeue them somewhere else.

Ah, perhaps you thought the chrono boost was tied to the specific production item? I only proposed a faster method for deploying chrono boost in certain (hopefully, the most frequent) situations; Its mechanics still remain the same. The chrono boost is still on the building and you can cancel production and manufacture something else as before.

However, at least in the context of real time strategy games, when players are using the same strategy, or purportedly equally strong strategies against each other, then it makes sense that the player putting in more effort (or better effort (or better effort faster)) should come out as the victor. This is expected of Starcraft, but is this element absent in Command & Conquer, or Supreme Commander, or Total Annihilation?

I disagree. Because strategies are easy to copy, but micro is specific to one individual and his years and years of practice. If an otherwise superior but micro-reliant build order was discovered, that would mean the fastest players win, even if they didn't need to do any strategizing of their own at all. Not to mention that StarCraft 2 is quite shallow in strategy, making it even more vulnerable to simple build order wins where the fastest execution of a well-known strategy is preferable. It's no coincidence that "creative" play is revered in the StarCraft community, precisely for this reason; It throws off the practiced BOs and gives room to true strategy. Pity every game of StarCraft isn't like this, which is what I'm after.

Hmm, the minimap fills the entire screen, meaning I have to toggle between a regular battlefield view and the minimap view. Is that correct?

Correct. It's basically a "zoom out" button. The map displays as long as its held, so a quick tap gives you a very rapid glimpse of the whole game, with increased accuracy compared to a small minimap in the corner. Of course, this makes the game actually more micro-y contrary to my goals, so I'm working on another method to display information (icons on the edges of the screen).

how does the computer know if I'm setting up an ambush by hiding units, or simply didn't notice the enemy attacking?

Well, you could try telling it that. It's your Star Trek game's fault if it didn't provide the necessary functions for basic strategy. Sounds like a bad implementation of a good idea. I'm sure I can do better. (or die trying!)

this is an old post someone made in team liquid regarding starcraft that i thought was appropriate to this thread; particularly the last paragraph

Now this gets into a more philosophical debate. What he said is true. It is my belief that intelligence trumps strength. I think it should be pretty obvious at this point in our civilization's evolution. Like I said, I wonder what the people who think otherwise will say when we control everything with our minds and their quick fingers become obsolete.

for browser apps (non-flash) i would recommend something around "JavaScript" - all the other technologies used are optional and some of them are technically not even html5 (canvas,...) but JavaScript will be in the mix.

There are plenty of web-based games that don't use JavaScript.

At least with manual control, I can decide that on the fly, whenever I need to.

Again, I wanted automation in addition to manual control, so you could still do that just fine even if the units were smart.

If you wanted to give an attack-move order, it is pretty simple: press A, then left click somewhere on open space. [...] Doing so requires an additional keyboard press instead of just right click, but it is very easy to do. Is there a reason why this option does not work?

You answered your own question; It requires an additional keyboard press. That's a 200% increase in the required number of actions to issue this command (with units already selected; Compared to my indirect order scheme, it's a 300% increase). And when you've got dozens of units on the front line, none with any brain of their own, you're wanting to perform this sequence quite frequently. It might not seem like much, but all the little things add up.

But I have to say, having right click defaulting to move when not targeting a hostile is more useful than having it default to attack-move. Sometimes you want to be fighting the units in the back instead of the units in front, or maybe you want your units to surround and pin the enemy down instead. And sometimes, if you really just want your units to go somewhere without engaging (such as retreating or scouting), having right click default to move is great.

Having an action that you only perform sometimes as the default to the easiest, most efficient key (or button in this case) is absolutely horrible design. The fact of the matter is that the examples you enumerated are the exceptions; Besides, I've already offered alternate solutions to issue such orders.

I think it would really suck if I have to right click three times every time I wanted my army to just move, surround or flank as intended, or to have them focus on a single target, when a single right click will do that now.

Would it really? How often do you realistically have to force your units to ignore everything else but a move? As for focus fire, I said a single click assigns a higher priority on the target, I never claimed three for that (although you certainly can; The more times you click, the higher the priority. With three clicks, every unit nearby might blindly charge forward to pick it off).

Your differentiation between the priorities is not very clear: if I have my army set to move on "low priority", does that mean they will chase any enemy that comes into vision? How will that be different from "high priority"? Will they just not engage unless an arbitrary number of hostiles are sighted, or some priority algorithm is fulfilled (and what would that priority algorithm be)?

I'm vague on purpose; The exact weights of the priorities and the algorithms to determine them are beyond the scope of my argument. It would take extensive testing to tune everything correctly.

Same goes for your definition of "nearby", or the "best" target to chrono boost.

1. I really doubt that there could be a focus-firing algorithm defined by any game programmer or game designer that would universially satisfy every player in any situation. Feel free to try.
2. Being able to accurately (and quickly) identify key targets to eliminate (or avoid) is a big part of strategy, even in Chess. You would not mind eliminating this element?

Once again you are missing the point. Never did I eliminate any of your beloved manual control; I merely added automation on top of it. I do not need to universally satisfy every condition; Only those that occur the most. For the rest, you can still do your precise orders, if with slightly increased effort (which is worth the gain).

I'm not sure what your indirect command example is trying to address. I can right click on empty space to tell my units I want them to go there in SC2, so that functionality is already available.

No, you can't. Read my example again. I don't have any units selected; Leading to even faster orders.

Will you be adding in orders for other movement related actions such as "flank", "surround", and "avoid"?

As few as possible. The current orders are defend, attack, recon and supply. Every maneuver I can think of so far is possible with these four. Well... Except whether a building should be assaulted or destroyed. Still working on that, it ties into a larger system of garrisoning infantry that I haven't figured out fully yet. I'll probably end up splitting attacking into assault and bombardment.

If I am understanding your shift+click proposal, I think it will not work well for two reasons:
1. It only works with clicking on the UI for production, and not when using hotkeys.
2. It is continuously used without my discretion, what if for example I only want to use one Chrono Boost, or what if the computer auto Chrono Boosts something that only has 3 seconds left till it finishes?

Again, this is not a replacement. It is an addition. Your hotkeys still work fine. If you only want to use one chrono boost, Shift+click once. If two, twice. Three, thrice. The last problem sounds like a user error to me. If you shift+click then you explicitly issue the order to chrono boost; I fail to see then how it is a mistake for the nexus to do so, since it is what you ordered.

Strategy is not relevant to micro? Is that what you are implying?

Mmm the other way around, micro should not be relevant to strategy; Your inability to mash keys quickly should hinder the effectiveness of your strategies as little as possible. That's what we're aiming here for; Minimizing the effort required by the interface to realize your plans.

Do tell

Alright. Well similarly to issuing orders (right-click), selection (left-click) has different methods: Point, line and closed path.

A simple click selects a unit. Some more specific selection action is bound to double-click, but I'm not sure what quite yet. Drawing a line does the traditional box select, from one corner to the other. A closed path is a greater effort, more precise way of selecting large quantities of units. Units within the closed area are selected, so you can "box select" more complex (or less rectangular) shapes. I might also do something with non-closed paths, but there's a risk of ambiguity with paths straight enough to resemble lines (box select).

Apart from simple selection, there's a system of dynamic, easy grouping of units. Whereas most RTS have a limited number of hotkeys to assign groups to, my system is key-less. Basically you can join/split groups with minimal effort (currently one key to (un)group all selected units; Working to simplify even further) and when individual soldiers are grouped, they literally operate as a unit. You cannot select an individual member of a squad, only the whole unit (maybe this is a good action for double-clicking?) and it appears on the map as a single icon. Since my "mini"-map fills the entire screen, hotkeys are largely unnecessary since you have very fast access to every part of the map with the press of a key.

Again note that you can completely ignore this functionality if you still want to micro everything yourself; Just don't touch the (un)group key (or whatever better method I come up with) and/or use the traditional hotkeys, which I'll probably still implement to satisfy conservative RTS'ers.

I don't recognize either of those as icons for browsers.

I think the only units I would never want to accidentally pull in to combat would be my workers, but I normally have my units rallied away from them anyway, and sometimes if I have screwed up too bad I will be forced to use them to fight. What kind of situations are you dealing with that are causing these problems for you?

I wasn't concerned - At all, in fact - about accidentally ordering units to fight; Quite the opposite: In most RTS I find it extremely laborious to get units to fight. They just stand still like lemons, watching as their friend 2 feet away is taking fire. This is the problem with excessive manual control, the units have no brain of their own. They don't move an inch to engage, or retreat in the face of certain defeat - Both of which are very easy to implement in this day and age.

It's even worse with a total separation between moving and attacking like in StarCraft. If you right-click right next to an enemy, you'd think you'd want your units to attack, but the game thinks they should suicidally run to the exact spot you clicked, ignoring the enemy taking free shots at them the whole way. This makes the whole ordeal more like controlling five dozen limbs than issuing orders to soldiers. You have to do every god damned thing yourself. I'm surprised they even shoot back.

My current solution to this is: Single-click issues "soft" order, i.e. with low priority, so units are free to do other things as well; And double-click, which makes the order a high priority; Finally, if you click three or more times in rapid succession, the unit ignores everything else (max priority). When you need something to do something NOW and ignore everything else, you're frantically clicking anyway.

Imagine having to draw pathing lines for 20+ units? When drawing the line across multiple screens, how fast does the screen scroll? Will the unit attempt to move on the path as literally as possible? If so, does that mean one will have to draw very windy paths when dealing with impassable terrain for ground moving units?

The beauty of it is that the number of units doesn't matter - It scales perfectly. You draw the line, and any units nearby follow it. You probably wouldn't track a path five miles long across several screens worth of terrain... For something of such scale you'd want to bring up the minimap - Which in my game fills the entire screen, so in a sense you were correct, the map can fit the screen on request - and draw on that.

The path is more like a guideline than an exact path to trace, so the units follow it somewhat, but it is mostly a suggestion. Paths over impassable terrain are obviously not a problem, since units do pathfinding fine. The most important aspect of the path is the destination.

I call these indirect orders. Rather than saying "you, do this" you say "I want this done" and, having done the math, the computer picks the best unit(s) for the job, if any. Like if you wanted to focus-fire a certain enemy down (although the unit AI should already choose targets intelligently), more often than not you're concerned with focusing that unit down, not who focuses it down. So having to select units before issuing the attack order is redundant at best.

Imagine you're Terrain playing against Protoss and a colossus marches up to roast your marines. The difference between having to select your vikings half a screen away and just clicking on the colossus right away could cost you the game.

The path example is not even the simplest form of indirect command. Even faster (and consequently, even less precise) would be to just click the destination. That'd mean, "I want units here", without specifying exactly who. Nearby units would prioritize moving there. Of course if no-one's near, the order is moot. In my game, there's a separate "scout" order which means "I want this location observed", which might pull a unit from far away to keep eyes on that spot.

Errr, the boost from Chrono Boost is pretty big o_O I believe it is a 50% production speed bonus? It would be way overpowered if it was just applied indefinitely at will, and reducing its strength will reduce the chances of doing risky/non-standard decisions such as tech hiding (Chrono Boosting a unit as fast as possible out of a building that is intentionally hidden and ambushing the opponent with it).

If you didn't want to change the mechanic at all, keeping it exactly the same, then at the very least the nexus should automatically chrono boost the best target when its energy reaches full. Because if you don't spend energy when it's full, the regen is wasted.

Let's consider the mechanics at work here again. What you want, is not "this nexus, chrono boost this building" - That's just the implementation. What you actually want, is "this unit/tech should build fast". What if you for instance Shift+click on a production item to not only add it to queue, but also automatically call for a nexus to boost its production. Now there's no need to select any nexuses at all, the actual desired mechanic remains the same, but the interface is improved.

Even if those games were somehow made slower or stream-lined, truly competitive players would always be looking for ways to optimize, if not in playing speed then in preemption, and one would end up with either a game that is still fairly intense or stagnant if nobody cares to progress it.

But they would be intense in strategy rather than micromanagement.

I do not beleive Core Xii specified a method for multiple unit selection, and in fact proposed the new system as a means of avoiding the need to "box" units. I would much prefer being able to circle units together as a group and ordering the collective to a position or along a path, as opposed to directing units one at a time.

Right. As outlined above, I was talking about issuing orders without any units selected at all (trading accuracy for immediacy). Selection and grouping are completely different subjects - I have also improved those, of course, and can elaborate on inquiry.

You can have a game that is strategic and competitive without needing to constantly maintain everything (like probe production, larvae spawning, etc.). I'm just wondering why no one has made one.

Supreme Commander does pretty well in the production aspect. Overall it still falls short, because units still sit like lemons watching their neighbors burn without lifting a finger without your interference. But compared to StarCraft... Well in StarCraft, you can't even add a unit to the queue unless you can for some reason pay for it in advance, even though it's not built until later. That just begs for you to babysit your money and factories. In SupCom you can not only pre-emptively fill queues, you can also begin production of stuff you don't have money for - They simply won't build until you get the cash.

I've taken it even further, allowing you to issue orders to units still in production (even grouping them!). StarCraft has rally points but those are factory-specific. What you want is for the finished unit to do something, not for the factory to rally all finished units somewhere (since different units have different purposes).

I'd read it. I read those platforming level design analysis articles that had samples from SMW and Sonic, and they left me wanting for more.

You could get literally images of the entire levels from... videogameatlas? dot com? I don't recall exactly but I know such a site exists.

The fervent devotion to Starcraft meant that they could only change small things without completely and utterly pissing off their hardcore fanbase (since that is the audience they were targeting, or so it seems).

Yet they took out LAN support... and got into a legal battle over pro-gaming leagues having the right to broadcast StarCraft... No, I think Blizzard is just stupid, is all.

i don't think the things you mention could have been automated. there's a trade off between creep tumors and spawn larvae, a trade off between scan and mules and extra supply, and there's deciding where you want to chrono-boost (which buildings). automating those would take those important decisions away from the player, because a game can be won or lost depending on what the player decides in regards to those options.

That's where you and Blizzard are wrong, and fail as game designers (not that you tried to be one, necessarily). It all comes down to identifying what you actually want to promote as an interesting game mechanic, and what's the implementation to get there. Calling down mules isn't a mechanic in itself... it's a solution to a balance problem; A solution that requires uninteresting, repetitive baby-sitting.

Take the example of the chrono boost... Rather than being a distinct ability to activate every X seconds that temporarily boosts production of the target, you could instead make it so that each nexus can select a boost target (and switch at any time), providing the exact same amount of boost per the same time, but constantly and without user action. Unless the player wants to change his decision, which is the interesting part, only then he should have to issue a different order.

Voila, I automated chrono boosting in 5 minutes. Only additional change required would be to figure out how to visually indicate to the enemy which building which nexus is boosting. It's hard to believe Blizzard's armada of game designers didn't think of this. Maybe they did, but consciously chose to make the game terrible instead.

besides, are you really saying it's *difficult* to do those things quickly? it doesn't take speed, it just takes memory and consistency, since you need to do them once every 30 seconds at most.

No more difficult than, say, opening doors to a building. Yet, we automate that, so that we may focus on grander, more interesting things. I most definitely do not feel that repetitive tasks are in any way interesting or part of any strategizing.

for instance, auto-mining is slightly less efficient than telling which worker to go to which patch, because if you are telling them to work individually you can optimize it by going for the closest patches first.

That's just a blatant failure to implement properly. I hope you're not seriously suggesting that the computer couldn't figure out which patches are closest and saturate them first for you. Absolutely no intelligent, human pattern recognition required there, just a simple distance check. If Blizzard couldn't even get that right then they truly are incompetent.

And it's completely irrelevant anyway, because you're saying that as if automation replaced anything - It wouldn't. You could still issue orders manually just fine. The point is you shouldn't need to, not with such obvious, mundane tasks.

No other program has bested Paint yet for pixel art, not even the dedicated ones like Gale (I remember very vividly how it corrupted my image on save).

The way people usually save palettes in Paint is by including them in the image itself. Then you can eyedrop them later.

Did you know that if you click the pixels right above the 8x zoom, you activate the hidden 10x zoom.

Oh, one worthy mention is Paint Express. It's only slightly worse than Paint, but it can do transparency.

@Core: What about Warhammer 40K: Dawn Of War?

Haven't played it, mostly because the art style of Warhammer is... well, ridiculous. Maybe I should.

It's probably possible to create an interface that would emphasize strategy and minimize the challenge in actually executing those strategies

Absolutely - I think this is exactly how Chess works. The moves are extremely simple, all you gotta do is point to a piece and then where to move it, taking turns with your opponent. Yet, Chess is one of the most strategic games ever conceived.

The problem with StarCraft is that the interface mechanics are too complicated/manual. For even something extremely simple like moving your units, you need to select them using hotkeys, box-select, etc. then click where you want them to go, making sure you don't accidentally click on anything else while at it... Such an overly complex sequence of commands for something as simple as moving a unit around.

As an example of my own work into remedying this curse that has plagued RTS' for years, in the RTS I'm developing, all you need to do is draw a line from the unit you want to move, to the destination. Just a quick jab of the mouse, starting near the unit, drawing a path you wish them to travel and ending at the destination. It's less precise, since other nearby units might interpret the order too, but if you have to do stuff quick (your guys are dying!) StarCraft doesn't have that option to sacrifice accuracy for immediacy.

I still haven't efficiently solved the problem of moving around the battlefield as rapidly as possible, so most of the time is still wasted into locating the unit. However, you can issue the order on the minimap just as well as on the main view; Again, trading precision for speed of execution.

Strategy == Plan of Action
Tactics == The Maneuvering of Forces In Battle

[...]

I think what Core Xii wants is a real-time tactics game not a real-time strategy game.

No. The problem here is that for both strategy as well as tactics, the interface is clunky. Tactics doesn't imply twitch-based gameplay any more than strategy does.

i still think it's weird to say that you can have a game with a real-time element where playing the game quickly doesn't matter. it's metaphysically impossible to create a game where thinking quickly matters and acting quickly doesn't, because you need to tell the game your thoughts somehow. even if it's a thought-computer interface, your speed in the game will be limited by how effectively you engage with that interface, and there will still be people who are more skilled than others at inputting their directives to the game.

I agree with everything you're saying. How is it in conflict with anything I've said? This is exactly my point, strategy games should aim to minimize this interface lag. StarCraft does not (not nearly enough, anyhow).

sc2 has a large number of changes which make it easy to play it well slowly, such as hotkeying groups of buildings, auto-mining, hotkeying an almost infinite number of troops instead of limiting it to groups of 12, tab changing between types of units when hotkeying large groups, and so on.

Yes, it made certain improvements to its predecessor. I'd also include auto-casting of spells to that list. But, it also introduced more micro-elements that make it more twitchy than ever. A Zerg player's proficiency is directly tied to his ability to repetitively spawn larvae with queens, advance creep tumors, etc. All of which could have been automated intelligently, yet weren't. An almost identical mechanic extends to Terran and Protoss with orbital command energy for mules and warp gate cooldown.

There is absolutely no excuse for why I shouldn't be able to, for instance, issue the order that you, queen, spawn larvae whenever you can on this hatchery, or all creep tumors spread automatically towards this location. Blizzard is un-innovative, lazy, and bad at developing games.

plus, if speed were all that mattered, [...]

Nobody was arguing that in StarCraft only speed mattered. What I'm arguing is that it matters where it shouldn't, however little.

that said, if you want a competitive sport that does not reward quickness of fingers, why would you look at fighting games or *real-time* strategy games? why not turn-based strategy games, or games like chess and go and shogi or even checkers?

Real-time strategy does not imply twitch-based gameplay; Rather, the ability to strategize fast and on a fine-grained space (whereas turn-based games are slow and often take place on a heavily quantized grid, where decisions have obvious consequences. In real-time, the effects are more subtle).

The appeal of real-time vs turn-based strategy for me is quick thinking, not quick fingers. In the future when we're controlling games with our thoughts, I wonder what the twitch-gamers have to say with all the time they've sunk into digit dexterity.

By my standards, StarCraft is not, in fact, real-time strategy at all; It's action strategy, because your ability to strategize comes second to your ability to mash keys.

I vote we stone them to death in the village square. Nuking seems so impersonal.

You'd rather throw stones than detonate a nuclear device?

...What's wrong with you?

gitk?

From what I can tell it looks like a repo viewer only, i.e. no remote management, pulling, diff interface, etc. Those there are plenty of; But none of them are full interfaces to git like TortoiseGit on Windows is.

Core, have you tried dual booting? That's what I do and it seems to work fine for me.

But what would the point be? If I can't listen to music on Linux I can't use it for... you know, when I'm not actively doing anything. Browsing and shit. And I'd have to boot to Windows for work and play... which pretty much covers everything except "nothing" as outlined above, and for that I need music. So what would I do on Linux?