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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2380 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 28, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Just wanted to highlight the essays written by the Zero-K devs about RTS game design. Surprisingly thoughtful and interesting stuff:

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/11_-_The_Atomic_Solution_to_Monospam

https://zero-k.info/mediawiki/Cold_Takes/16_-_Aim_and_Fire

One of the most important corollaries of the process is that weapon behaviour cannot depend on the existence of a target. This is known as the No Void Ray rule, as it was developed back when Starcraft 2 had a unit that gained damage the longer it fired. The unit was redesigned in the first expansion, probably because shooting your own stuff is allowed in Starcraft, but incentivising players to do it looked a bit silly. In any case, Void Ray would not even make it into Zero-K, since there would be nothing stopping it shooting into the sky when idle. Maintaining its damage bonus is smart, so we could not in good conscience prevent it from doing so. This would make the mechanic pointless, so we would avoid adding it in the first place.

The site seems to be down so I can't read it there right now. But, I'm a little confused by that quote about Void Rays... what was wrong with them? I played SC2 when it first came out (after playing a lot of original Starcraft) and I thought Void Rays were fine. Charging them up by firing on your own stuff might have looked goofy, but it still required some skill and preparation. If anything, my complaint about SC2 was the opposite... everything was just too easy and automatic, so armies could all form up into one single death-ball and move around in perfect synchronization, giving little chance for players to show their skills or make a comeback wtih a smaller army.

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