Syllabus

Course Facilitator: Alan Feng (integral_king@berkeley.edu)

Units: 2 units, Pass/No Pass, CECs by email

Time and Place:

Thursdays 7-9pm at Haas C230

Lab/Discussion (Optional): 12pm – 5pm 1^st floor of Moffitt Library

Course Description:

UC Berkeley students with an interest in real-time strategy games and the competitive gaming landscape are encouraged to participate in this class.

This course will go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game Starcraft. There will be lecture on various aspects of the game, from the viewpoint of pure theory to the more computational aspects of how exactly battles are conducted. Calculus and Differential Equations are highly recommended for full understanding of the course. Furthermore, the class will take the theoretical into the practical world by analyzing games and replays to reinforce decision-making skills and advanced Starcraft theory.

Class will start with lecture and usually include a special discussion topic having to do with the day’s lecture to inspire new and original thought. At the end of lecture, there may be time to analyze student-submitted replays to illustrate a point or to improve analysis. Homework will be assigned at the end of each class and is due at the beginning of each lecture.

Course Learning Objectives and Goals:

What may look like complex topics are just ways we want you to think more deeply about the game to derive a greater satisfaction from playing. Furthermore, this understanding should have applications in real life, to further synthesize new information from limited inferences. The primary goal is for students to learn, enjoy the art of competitive StarCraft, and have fun. Overall, students will be applying critical thinking, quick decision-making, and game theory skills throughout the sessions. Students will also learn what to look for in a replay or game to learn most effectively.

Prerequisites:

Students should be familiar with all units and some basic StarCraft strategy. All students should of course enter the class with an open and analytic mind.

Starcraft: Brood War

Other Reading:

The Theory of Starcraft by Alan Feng

Suggested:

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

Crazy as Me by Lim Yo Hwan

Attendance and Participation:

All absences must be excused (you should inform the course facilitators no later than the Friday before) and more than two absences will result in a grade of “No Pass.”  Please note that you will not be able to make up any work you missed during class and that new material will build on previous weeks’ instruction. Furthermore, there will be several pop quizzes graded based on completion given in class at a random time, and these will contribute to your participation score as well. It is also expected that students participate by asking questions and voicing their analytical suggestions during the instruction, and by practicing with others.

Course Workload:

Each week, students must submit 2 replays of games they played and are willing to analyze in depth. Students are expected to explain the flow of the game, identify the time of several positive and negative moves, and show an understanding of how to overcome mistakes in these replays. Some replays will be reviewed by the class together. These replays must be emailed to StarcraftDecal@gmail.com with this subject title: First Name, Last Name, Week #. Submissions without that subject title will not be guaranteed to be filtered into the correct folder, and hence, we cannot guarantee that it will be graded. Grading for these replays will be on a credit/nocredit basis. In addition to submitting replays, there will periodically be homework assigned online due in class the following week.

(Tentative) Course Outline:

Week 1: Orientation / Competitive Gaming Industry Overview

Week 2: Units, Strength, Weakness, Attributes, Stats

Week 3: Fighting Micro and Unit Use

Week 4: Army Movement and Positioning

Week 5: Expo and Macro

Week 6: Building Placement and Base Layout

Week 7: Scouting and Counters

Week 8: Harass

Week 9: Overloading the Enemy, Multi-plays

Week 10: Economic Basis, Micro vs Macro

Week 11: Timing and Evaluation of Resources

Week 12: Deception

Week 13: Mindset and Series Play

Week 14: Tournament

Grading Breakdown:

Final Project: 40%

Replay submissions and other homework: 40%

Attendance, Participation, and Quizzes: 20%

Final Project:

There will be a final project where students will present and explain their contribution to the Starcraft Community. This may take the form of an essay detailing new theory or calculations, or an in-depth analysis of a significant game. Whichever final project is chosen will be displayed or published on a public forum for peer criticism.

Starcraft 2 from PC gaming magazine unit preview
Zealot: Zealots are the standard infantry unit of the portoss from starcraft. Still equipped with a pair of glowing psionic blades for melee combat, the zealot will now charge the enemy to close distance with ranged units quicker than before.

Stalker: Stalkers are a new type of dark dragoon. They’re fast moving and lightly armored with a powerful anti-air and anti-infantry weapon, but their secret weapon is there “blink” ability that will allow them to teleport anywhere in visual range in an instant

Immortal: A new type of heavy dragoon, the immortals will be equipped with a shield that activates only when hit by heavy weapons like siege tanks, making them excellent for assaulting heavily defended positions but weak against raiding parties with light weapons.

Observer: The invisible flying eyes of the Protoss are back. We can confirm they’ll be in the game, but further details are shrouded in secrecy.

Colossus: True to it’s name, the colossus is an enormous four-legged walker that rakes the ground with a heavy beam weapon. They will be extremely effective against small swarming units like zerglings or marines-their beams target one unit at a time, and instantly sweep to a new target when the first is destroyed. Using their long legs, they can step up and down ledges with ease.

Phoenix: When its standard fighter weapon wont do the job, the phoenix will be able to activate its overload ability to damage all enemy air units nearby, which also disables the phoenix itself for a few moments. If the overload doesn’t demolish the enemy you’ll be a sitting duck

Phase prism: .The new phase prism will act as both a troop transport and a mobile power pylon allowing you to restore functionality to a base when your pylons are destroyed by raiders or when you build away from your base. Combined with the warp-in tech. Youll be able to use them to crate and army anywhere on the map.

Warp ray: These flying weapons inflict additional damage the longer they fire on a single target as they bring as they bring more beams online, which will make them extremely powerful against large targets like battle cruisers and structures. Their focused fire makes them vulnerable against small anti-air units like marines.

High templar: The high templar is back and he’ll bring his powerful psionic storm area attack with him. But he’s gotten a handy new power he’ll be able to create a force field to trap enemy units temporarily or create barriers. Blizzard testing has revealed some extremely effective bottlenecks tactics using him. The ability to say you can’t go there anymore will be very powerful.
Dark templar: Just like in the first game the dark templar is a stealth unit that wreaks havoc to any force foolish enough to leave home without a detector. any new special abilities have yet to be revealed

Ok everyone, I have finally got off my butt to complete BNGE v2.0, Warcraft III does not seem to like how BNGE saves the registry key, I cannot fix this.

When/if I do fix any bugs, you can download the update by just running BNGE v2.0, if you have automatic updates disabled, you goto the Settings tab and click Check for Updates. If it is required to quit BNGE, you will be notified and BNGE will quit, also when it quits it will open it’s program folder.

Any updates are saved to Update.zip, you should remove everything from the current folder and extract this zip to that same folder, this ensures that the update will be applied. For your Settings.bnge, you may leave this here, the new version should read it just fine.

When my website is down, automatic updates will be disabled, if you didn’t even think of this, your an idiot.

BNGE v2.0 is not under any license or warranty, after downloading you are in charge of it’s usage. If BNGE gives you problems, you should remove BNGE, you should also report the problem to me so I can try to fix it, after using BNGE and your computer is not in a healthy state, you should also remove BNGE.

BNGE will not run in MS-DOS mode (not Command Prompt, but the actual DOS mode), BNGE is a desktop application, meaning it should be ran when you are not in DOS mode.

BNGE will try to save it’s files to it’s current folder, this will cause problems with Windows Vista, you should give BNGE proper permissions.

Enough of all that stuff, let’s get to the features / bug fixes…
- Rewrote BNGE from the ground up.
- A new tabbed interface.
- Settings are now saved in BNGE’s current folder.
- Warcraft III support has been added.
- A starcraft previewer has been added.
- A built-in updater has been added.
- The last character of the last server is no longer removed (it was a bug).
- The server lists use the same selection as Blizzard’s games.
(e.g. U.S. West is selected in one of Blizzard’s games, that same server will also be selected in BNGE).
- The main window has been shrunk (it’s now smaller then before).
- Starcraft codes are now like Oblivion’s codes instead of actual codes, however the codes are not case-sensitive (\R and \r will both work).
- A program icon has been added, hope everyone likes it.

BNGE will not run on a Macintosh, BNGE was built for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista. BNGE will not run on Linux (why would you think it would run on Linux anyway?).

If you use BNGE on Vista, BNGE may look weird and you will not be able to fix this. If you use BNGE on XP, and it DOES look weird, you can fix this by changing your theme to Windows Classic, the scheme does not matter.

Thanks for using BNGE instead of the others!

HackDetector 0.1
by MasterOfChaos

Atm it finds the following exploits
-Zerg Mineralhack
-Nuke anywhere
-Multicommand
-Automine at the start of the game
I want to add detection for the rally-exploit but need a replay where it is used for that.

Multicommand
It now checks for a command alternating with select. If this happens at least 3 times(corresponds to 3 control groups being commanded) it displays a message. I’m not sure if there are occasionally false positives.

Automine
Automine consists of fours selects alternating with gaters/moves to different targets in the first possible frame(5 on bnet, 2 on LAN). Detecting these is similar to multicommand, except moves with different target are also considered here.

Nuke anywhere
Whenever an opponent selects a nuke you get a message. As selecting a nuke is required for nuke anywhere exploit and not possible without a hack it should work reliably.

Zerg mineralhack
It shows a message if a CancelTrain command is given to a zerg larva. There might be other variants of this hack (related to muta->guard/devourer and hyd->lurker), so if you find a replay where a minhack is not detected post it here.

Set enemy Rallypoint
AdvLoader 2.0 allowed observers to change the rallypoints of enemy buildings. For 1.15.2 there are hacks which allow the same for every player/observer. Unfortunalty I have found no replay of this exploit, so detection is still missing for that exploit.

If you have a replay where the opponent uses an exploit which is not detected by this detector please post a replay here. Rigged UMS maps do not count as an exploit.

Download and usage
Now it is a plugin. Copy it to your Launcher folder and check it in the plugin list.
http://winner.cspsx.de/Starcraft/Tool/HackDetector.zip

As usual blizzard might ban you for using this. The chance for that is a bit higher that with chaosplugin, and about the same as LatencyChanger or any of the AdvLoader plugins.