Blizzard have just released their first little sneak peak of what we can expect from future StarCraft II e-Sport matches, and possibly also a sneak peak of Battle.net 2.0 features such as a quite advanced spectator mode. They call it the StarCraft II Battle Report, and is a commentated video of StarCraft 2 Alpha gameplay.

The battle itself is naturally quite interesting, as is listening to Dustin Browder and the e-Sports team member Robert Simpson, but the really interesting to see that they have brought forward is the on-screen Combat Information! It’s a semi-translucent box in the upper left corner with information about the players in the match. The type of data is shifted around, and seems to be under the control of the commentators with easy keyboard commands on their end. A dropdown for sort of selection does exist in the infobox though, so it’s likely that it’s controlled both through hotkeys for spectators as well as regular mouse commands.

Information Window

• Units (alive workers, infantry, anything)
• Production
  • Unit production
  • Research (current techs)
  • Construction (what’s being constructed)

• Resources

  • Mineral
  • Gas
  • Food
• None

The commentators can also see all on-screen units’ health bars, just like players can inside the game by pressing some other command and we can also see mouse clicks of at least one of the players. Observing their units, they are also visibly selected by the owner (as you see a dotted selection), and you can see selection points of buildings being planted as well. This is all just the animations you can’t actually see the mouse cursor of the players.

The pictures to the right show from the top: The first one shows a Terran base, where unit hit points are showing and Units is the choice in the Information Window. The second one shows a Probe and SCV scouting, and Production in the Info Window. The third shot shows a Colossus firing at a group of SCVs, and the Info Window shows Resources. You can also find more shots with brief description added in the StarCraft 2 Screenshots gallery.

Other things worth noting includes that a number of resources is also shown in the upper right corner, and it’s unknown which of the players’ stats it is, or a combination. The logos for Protoss and Terran are the same as the logo change we reported on, and it seems like the Terrans might have wholeheartedly adopted the Dominion flag, since red is normally their standard colour, as blue is with Protoss.

Promises such as letting APM to display is yet to be seen, but this is likely just the first in a long line of Battle Reports, seeing as it’s number one in the URL, and that they seem to have set up a whole system for this. It might be easier and less time-consuming for the SC2 devs to just make a commentary instead of answering many fan questions on gameplay. A picture says a thousand word, so we’ll hope a video says even more.

Thanks SCW member Kuangtu for spotting the new Official site feature!

UPDATE!

• More Battle Reports Are Coming!

 

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