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I appreciate the technology demo, but anyone who has played 'serious' SC games knows that you have to use the keyboard. How are you even supposed to select a gr

I appreciate the technology demo, but anyone who has played 'serious' SC games knows that you have to use the keyboard. How are you even supposed to select a group of units in a messy battle? I suppose you can connect a keyboard to it.. but then, why bother? I think mouse-only games would make better candidates for successful ports.

Dove 14y ago
I agree. The control in the demo looks cumbersome. I've come to the conclusion that touchscreen devices have a lower information throughput than traditional desktop machines. Relative to a mouse, the touchscreen is inaccurate, unreliable, and (using it) blocks your view more. You can't rely on there being a hard keyboard, and if there is one, you can't rely on it being big and comfortable enough to use at high speeds. So it's hard for me to imagine, even in principle, how you'd port something like Starcraft. It uses almost all of the desktop's information throughput -- two or three mouse buttons and most of the keyboard keys going like mad the whole game -- and you just don't have that kind of bandwidth on a touch screen. I would love to see a Real Strat on a touch device -- not just a lot of tower defense games. But I think you'd have to do a lot more than port what we have. You'd have to go back to the beginning, back before Warcraft, when they were still figuring out how to make the controls work on a PC, and reinvent the genre for touch screen. Touch screen games seem biased toward the turn-based and the scripted, rather than the real-time and manually controlled. Perhaps, with a lot of scripting and game redesign, RTSs could survive that transition, but I think they'd come out looking pretty different.
- bytefactory 14y ago
  Apparently they've got Caesar III running on the emulator too!
jedberg 14y ago
When I first started playing Starcraft, I only used the mouse. It was still fun to play. I can definitely see playing a quick starcraft game on my tablet as a fun little diversion while I'm on public transit or something.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  Problem one: A mouse still offers more granularity than your finger Problem two: Starcraft is not the best "quick game for a fun little diversion". Maybe I've got the wrong idea here, but IMO RTS is the Monopoly of video games, and I don't play Monopoly on the bus.
  - barbs 14y ago
    Don't say that, Monopoly is a terrible game :(. But I get your point.
  - jedberg 14y ago
    I'll grant you point one, but I can't agree with number two. We used to play Starcraft as our after lunch activity in the reddit office. It was a great quick diversion.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      Office activities are a tad different from casual sidebars in day-to-day life. You don't always know how long you will be free.
  - Shorel 14y ago
    Age of Empires is the Monopoly of RTS in the sense that a single match can last for hours and hours. In Starcraft most matches are decided in 15 minutes. That's one of the reasons for its success.
Dylan16807 14y ago
I could buy this argument if you were talking about almost any game except starcraft, with its arbitrary selection limits. And if you want groups it's pretty easy to do that with software buttons.

Dove 14y ago

I agree. The control in the demo looks cumbersome. I've come to the conclusion that touchscreen devices have a lower information throughput than traditional desktop machines. Relative to a mouse, the touchscreen is inaccurate, unreliable, and (using it) blocks your view more. You can't rely on there being a hard keyboard, and if there is one, you can't rely on it being big and comfortable enough to use at high speeds. So it's hard for me to imagine, even in principle, how you'd port something like Starcraft. It uses almost all of the desktop's information throughput -- two or three mouse buttons and most of the keyboard keys going like mad the whole game -- and you just don't have that kind of bandwidth on a touch screen. I would love to see a Real Strat on a touch device -- not just a lot of tower defense games. But I think you'd have to do a lot more than port what we have. You'd have to go back to the beginning, back before Warcraft, when they were still figuring out how to make the controls work on a PC, and reinvent the genre for touch screen. Touch screen games seem biased toward the turn-based and the scripted, rather than the real-time and manually controlled. Perhaps, with a lot of scripting and game redesign, RTSs could survive that transition, but I think they'd come out looking pretty different.

bytefactory 14y ago
Apparently they've got Caesar III running on the emulator too!

jedberg 14y ago

When I first started playing Starcraft, I only used the mouse. It was still fun to play. I can definitely see playing a quick starcraft game on my tablet as a fun little diversion while I'm on public transit or something.

sliverstorm 14y ago
Problem one: A mouse still offers more granularity than your finger Problem two: Starcraft is not the best "quick game for a fun little diversion". Maybe I've got the wrong idea here, but IMO RTS is the Monopoly of video games, and I don't play Monopoly on the bus.
- barbs 14y ago
  Don't say that, Monopoly is a terrible game :(. But I get your point.
- jedberg 14y ago
  I'll grant you point one, but I can't agree with number two. We used to play Starcraft as our after lunch activity in the reddit office. It was a great quick diversion.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Office activities are a tad different from casual sidebars in day-to-day life. You don't always know how long you will be free.
- Shorel 14y ago
  Age of Empires is the Monopoly of RTS in the sense that a single match can last for hours and hours. In Starcraft most matches are decided in 15 minutes. That's one of the reasons for its success.

Dylan16807 14y ago

I could buy this argument if you were talking about almost any game except starcraft, with its arbitrary selection limits. And if you want groups it's pretty easy to do that with software buttons.