[Baldie]

New eSports Features for StarCraft II Patch 2.0.10

FEATURE:
Built-in Custom Observer UI interfaces

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SUMMARY:
Two Blizzard-made customized observer UI interfaces are now included with Patch 2.0.10, and will appear in the Options > Gameplay > Observer Interface dropdown menu by default. It should now be very easy for anyone to try out these interfaces when observing games as all they need to do is go into the Options menu and select one. These UI files reside in the following location:

- <installdir>\StarCraft II\Mods\Split_1v1.SC2Interface
o This UI (or variations of it) are what is used in most WCS events.
- <installdir>\StarCraft II\Mods\Streamlined.SC2Interface
o This is a more graphic intensive UI and was demoed during the Heart of the Swarm Irvine Launch Event.

The game will continue to read from the previous location for user-generated customized observer UI interfaces:

- C:\Users\USERNAME\My Documents\StarCraft II\Interfaces

FEATURE:
Extra Camera Zoom

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HOTKEYS:
- Z (Zoom Level 1)
- Shift + Z (Zoom Level 2)

SUMMARY:
Allows the camera to zoom out even further than in previous versions of SC2. Useable only as a Referee or Spectator, not as a Player.

There are two extra zoom levels added, pressing Z will toggle the new mid-level distance, and pressing Shift + Z will toggle all the way out to the new maximum distance.

This new toggle is mostly meant to be used sparingly and only in select situations, very similar in manner to when observers zoom in to highlight on some specific piece of action. A good example of when this feature would be used would be when a large battle is about to take place, two armies are converging on each other, and a zoom out would reveal the positioning of both armies together in the playable game area.

FEATURE:
Units Lost Overlay

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HOTKEY:
Shift + L

SUMMARY:
A new “Units Lost” overlay can be brought up while observing a game. It’s very similar to the compare panels (Resource, Army, APM, etc.) in that it’s meant to be brought up for just a brief period of time to get a quick snapshot of how many of each type of unit have been killed so far in each game.

FEATURE:
Ladder Maps Dropdown Menu in Custom Games

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SUMMARY:
A new “Ladder Maps” filter has been added to the dropdown menu in Custom Games > Browse. Selecting this option will display all melee maps that are currently being used on the StarCraft II matchmaking ladder. This can be sorted by 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or 4v4 using the “Category” dropdown.

One of the reasons this was added was to help eSports admins more easily find the official ladder versions of maps that are used in StarCraft II tournaments, to help simplify/streamline the creation of game lobbies for tournament matches.

FEATURE:
Improved Replay Fast Forwarding

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SUMMARY:
Previously when watching a replay, you could only drag the slider forward to the furthest point that you’ve watched. In other words, if you watched the first 5 minutes in a replay, the rewound the replay, you could only drag forward up to the 5 minute mark.

With this feature, it is now possible to drag to any point on the timeline. If you drag past the furthest point you watched, the game will black out the screen and fast forward the replay until it reaches the point you dragged to.

Also, before this change, you could only jump to one of the internal saved game “key frames” that get saved while watching the replay. So if you dragged back to 2:27, it might actually load the key frame that was saved at the 2:00 mark and start playing back from there. With this change, you can now drag forward or backward to any time and it will load the exact time that you dragged to, instead of loading the nearest key frame.

Thanks to PJ (@Blizzard_ANZ) for providing the detailed information!

[Plottel]

I LOVE all of these additions, especially the replay scrolling part. No more will I have to load up a replay on 8x, alt tab, go to the toilet, come back and hope it's up to the good bit.
Really good implementations from Blizzard here, going to make casts a lot easier and smoother, as well as helping people analyse their replays much faster

[zealous]

wow kevin of ipl to blizzard thats why it sounded fmiliar

[nirvAnA]

this update is amazing

[TCPDecas]

This is why I love Starcraft, no other gaming company gives so much back to the community and listens to what we want.
SCII for the win