Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Video Teaser

I have been trying to figure out how to do an FPVOD of my own. Not to demonstrate my skills (‘cause they are clearly lacking), but to see if I can get some useful response. And because I think doing videos of my own is pretty cool, but I wont admit to that in public.

I’ve done a small teaser video while I am preparing a full FPVOD of a game that Michael (1pq) and I played yesterday on Destination.

I know there is a huge list of things I did wrong in this game:

  • I certainly did not pay enough attention to my economy. I had a lot of probes idle for long stretches of time. In my defense: I was very nervous that I would neglect my units so I over compensated a bit here.
  • I did not use hotkeys enough for my units. I think this is a problem and Michael pointed it out after the game as well. The problem is that 0 is my most recent nexus, 4 to 9 is used for gateways (that is not enough by the way). 3 is used for my shuttle and 1 and 2 is supposed to be for my main army. However, in late game battles units and entire control groups tend to die very fast so making new groups on the fly is the isssue.
  • There was a point where I could have attacked and won, but it was mostly because my opponent had neglected to make units. How was I supposed to know? I knew he had the economy to be well defended and I have – in waay to many games – rushed in and lost the game because of it.
  • I could have raided undefended expansions more aggressively with groups of zealots. I should have done that but I remember thinking that the approaches were probably mined. Actually they should have been. I now see that Michael had the mines for it, but just did not lay them down.

Actually I think that many of my points are about me knowing that he could have prevented something I ought to have tried, but in fact he did not. Its like stepping up the meta game a bit. He could have prevented some of the things I ought to have done, but I ought to have known that although he could have, he was way to overloaded to actually do it.

Phew it is getting complicated. Still a nice video though.

9 comments:

  1. Dude, I've just been getting back into SC as well. My name used to be NsaneNDaBrane, I think my BW record was something like 5,500-700. I played waaaay too much, but I never got into ladder matches, and now with SC2 right around the corner, I feel like I gotta warm myself again, plus I'd like to try to get into competitive SC this time. Would love to practice with you sometime.

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  2. Sure, I am always up for a game. At least when I have the time.

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  3. I have been playing with the same stuff. I have tried Guncam and audacity, but i think the quality of the video is quite gnarly. I cant see any of the "writing" and when i add a building it just turns green or red, like this big blop on the screen. Further more, the sound part has this buzzing sound. Its really annoying and i cant figure out what the problem is. Could you give me some pointers on how to work around these issues?

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  4. I think I have tried almost all programs "out there" to do videos in Starcraft. What worked for me ended up being Camtasia version 3. There are newer versions out there, but they suck.

    I think a lot of my problems are related to my use of Windows Vista, but this program have no Vista related issues.

    There are two important tricks though, that I need to use together with this program. 1) Never start a recording while in the lobby. Start after the game has started and 2) never tab out to the desktop while recording. End the recording first.

    Oh, and setting up sound recording was not simple either, but the complications was mostly in vista and my soundcard drivers. Not in Camtasia.

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  5. Victory over me is so close you can almost taste it :-)

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  6. I'm not a Protoss specialist, and I've played it only about a year ago (and switched to Zerg), but I find it weird you don't seem to use any Zealots. When I look at the Dragoons trying to barrage a cliff full of Tanks, I have a feeling that something is wrong.

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  7. Well, I am light on zealots because zealots tend to die very fast to spider mines. I realize that a healthy combination of both dragoons and zealots is the best, but you need to dragoons to clear the mines and sometimes you get into a fight with a slightly skewed unit composition.

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  8. Like my protege Dwight already said, Zeal/Goon is the way. Just check out if the enemy emphasises Tanks and Vultures and produce your units accordingly (Dragoons > Vultures > Zealots > Tanks). And flank a lot. I know it's not easy. That wuss Dwight stopped playing a Protoss because he was always killed by my Terran Ball in the first attack.

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