Blizzard has released the latest version of the BlizzCast, mostly Diablo III updates...

The StarCraft II portion

Bornakk: For the next segment we have some Starcraft 2 questions and our Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder has come back to help answer them.  Welcome back Dustin!
Dustin Browder:  Hey everybody.

   
Bornakk: The first question is from Norfindel on Battle.net. Can you give us some insight into the current air model, like what are the roles of the air unites, and what do you see working really well in-game?

Dustin Browder:  Well obviously each of the races behaves differently with how they use their air units. The Zerg, obviously the mutalisk is still a powerful part of the Zerg air force and still used for a lot of fast raiding, a lot of sudden attacks from different directions to keep the enemy off balance and of course in mass in the end game you can obviously use mutalisks for mass air assaults.

The other races behave a little bit differently.  The Terrans with their banshee, is very very powerful anti-ground unit.  It can even sometimes just power right through base defenses which really the wraith couldn’t have handled in the original game. So you see a lot of need for all the races to have some very powerful anti-air weapons to deal with these kinds of threats.
       
A similar threat on the Protoss side is the void ray. It is a very powerful bream that can really do a lot of damage to enemy buildings. So you’ll see there are some very heavy hitters in the air in Starcraft 2 that really require you to get out there and use some of these more dedicated anti-air units like the corrupter, like the phoenix, to really fend off these powerful sort of air threats. Obviously there are some similarities players will see with the original game, at the same time there are these really powerful hitters really do make a pretty big difference.
       
You'll also seem some new authority for some of the bigger units in the game. Certainly the carriers have a much longer range than they’ve ever had before. It makes them a very powerful threat from the air in the end game. We should probably see more carriers used in higher level games but obviously will see how that goes in the beta. And of course the battlecruiser has three different options in terms of how he wants to sort of improve his battlecruiser, whether he wants to buy a yamato weapon for his battlecruiser, or the player wants to a buy a shield for his cruiser, sort of different choices for the player for the battlecruiser which again adds to the authority of these big end game units which makes them a little more practicle in different matchups.  Where previously you would only see battlecruisers in certain matchups in Starcraft, now in Starcraft 2 you’ll probably see them in more matchups sort of across the board.


Bornakk: Okay. The next question is from Ultimasx on Battle.net. I noticed that in the Protoss demo the Protoss buildings when warped in had like there surfaces visibly warped in, like in the original Starcraft. It seems however in recent builds and footage, Protoss buildings just appear after the building animation but the units still have the surfaces visible when warping in. So basically it sounds like he is seeing some differences in the animations here and can you tell us how the animations are planned to work for the Protoss structures?

Dustin Browder:  Sure so I talked to Samwise just before coming here, our Art Director, and asked him about this and he doesn’t remember making any changes throughout the process for how the Protoss are supposed to be working so it’s possible in either some of the builds or some of the footage we’ve put out we may have had some errors, we may have had some bugs, I’m not exactly sure what people are seeing but I can certainly speak to what the intention is and what the intention will be.
   
The building will obviously have a warp-in state just as it did in the original Starcraft, sort of a building state.  There’s sort of a big ball of energy , you can sort of see the building warping in but it’s not obviously clear what the building is going to be yet. Then as we get to the final phases of the building warping in you see an outline of the building sort of shimmering sort of fading in as the building is teleported in from its location on another world to this battlefield. It will sort of harden and you’ll see the gold shape or in the case of dark templar you’ll see the sort of the more blue platinum shape of the building sort of form into place. So it should look at a basic level very similar to the way it was in the original Starcraft but obviously with our updated graphics engine, with the new 3D stuff, it should look a whole lot better.
       

Bornakk: A lot more detailed.
Dustin Browder:  Yeah.
       

Bornakk: He actually had another question, he noticed that the Terran buildings, they smoke instead of just catching on fire. He knows this is a bit early but he just wanted to know if Zerg buildings will still bleed after taking damage?

Dustin Browder:  I certainly hope so. We obviously haven’t gotten to that stage where we’re doing a lot of that work yet. A lot of the stuff people are seeing in-game right now, I know we’re showing a lot of material, I know people are looking at it saying, “If this looks really good, it must be close to final.” That’s certainly not how the art team feels about it right and they’ve been going over it and hitting individual units as we go forward, individual races, and the Zerg in terms of their buildings and even their units are still the furthest behind in that respect. There is still a lot more work to go into the Zerg , for instance the hatchery, the lair, the hive are all going to go under massive revisions here in the next couple of weeks as we really punch up the art to really represent these iconic, critical, central buildings to a Zerg base.  So there is still a lot of work to go into it and certainly bleeding buildings would feel very Zergly, very appropriate for the race and is something we’d love to do.
       

Bornakk: Well that wraps up the Starcraft 2 questions, thanks for coming in today Dustin!
Dustin Browder:  Alright thanks guys.
       



There was a couple of videos of the old Protoss warpin animation vs the new animation, you can check it out on the official Blizzcast page, or this video below (edited and uploaded by sclegacy)



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