In Utter Darkness

I've been playing the guitar for 14 years now. I started when I was ten. Learning Starcraft has made me remember how I felt those first few months of playing the guitar. When you start playing an instrument, you can do it in one of two ways. The first way is simple, you learn exactly how to play Smoke on the Water or Für Elise by googling where you want your fingers to be and then simply copying those instructions. The other way is to mercilessly practice the basics. It's not fun and you don't get any quick or even semi-quick results. A guitarist has to learn each chord painfully slowly and spend endless hours trying and failing to hit the chords, then transitioning between them and coordinating the two hands. A pianist has to learn fingering by practicing until he or she wants to headbutt a wall, then concentrate on one hand at a time until both can do things on their own.

In the end, the Für Elise people will only know how to play Für Elise, and they can never transition out of it. They have no foundation. The people who learn the basics well become actual musicians, able to learn Für Elise in a fraction of the time it took the other person by applying those basics to that particular song. When I get cheesed in the bronze league, it makes me think of kids playing some simple melody over and over again while snickering at me trying desperately to just hit a G chord. But I want to learn how to macro, and I will spend the time it takes.

To continue the analogy, I want to tell you what it feels like to play the guitar once you actually know how to. A ton of stuff happens simultaneously in every single chord or tone. When you play a G chord, you have to put three fingers on the correct strings and frets, but you also have to put them down hard enough and in the right place, otherwise the string will be muted and no sound comes out. You also need to have your fingers in the correct angle so that they don't touch any other strings, because if they do, those strings will be muted. Your other hand then produces the sounds, either by hitting the right amount of strings in a sweeping motion, or by picking the strings one by one in some order. But when you know how to play the guitar, you don't actually think about these things. There is no individual control of the fingers, you just think "G" and the experience from years of practice automatically places your fingers in the right spots with the correct angles and force. If you've practiced finger-picking a lot, it also requires very little thought to control your other hand. Your fingers pick the strings almost automatically. There is also no "1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4" in your head to keep track of the rhythm. You just have a feeling for it, and that comes with experience.

When I play Starcraft, I'm completely overwhelmed. I have a basic idea of a build order and how I want it to end up, but this is what happens in my head:

"Ok, I'm making SCVs, making SCVs, should I build more marines? How much money do I have? Crap I need to put down more barracks OH SHIT I'm not making SCVs, gotta make SCVs, oh hey scouting probe, is there a proxy somewhere? Where did it go? Damn it, supply blocked! Oh shit I didn't take the gas gotta make some SCVs which hotkey did I use? Are you all in the control group? Noo, I haven't muled at all, shit should I scan? Why don't I have a factory? I should have one right about DAMN IT, SUPPLY BLOCKED AGAIN!"

When I play chords on the guitar, all I really need to do is think "G A Am Em" and a general idea of how I want the strings to be picked. Because my hands move by themselves, I can concentrate on other things, such as singing at the same time, or adding small flourishes to the chords or the melody in my own personal style. If I play a heavy metal solo, I break it down into pieces that I practice individually using various techniques I've learned, until each of the pieces becomes easy, then I put them all together. Being able to improvise takes a long, long time and you have to know the basics so well that you can play the guitar in your sleep. After 14 years of playing the guitar, if I hear a song and it's not too complicated, I can immediately play it myself. I can also make up songs in my head and then make those sounds with my guitar. But it's taken forever. I've spent thousands of hours playing to be that comfortable.

I'm not a Starcraft pro by any stretch of the imagination, but when I watch them, I think that I understand what goes on in their heads. It's certainly not "I'll make drones let's see 4 S D 4 S D check this expo check injects 4 S D 4 S D let me look at that keyboard how much do mutas cost?". It's impossible to do this with over 200 APM, you can't think that fast. A guitarist doesn't think "Fourth fret good angle hit e string with right hand, fifth fret good angle hard enough to make sound without right hand, seventh fret good angle hard enough", a simple hammer on technique that can produce three tones in a fraction of a second. The guitarist just thinks about the sounds and then it happens.

To learn how to macro, I think I know what I need to do. I need to hit those G chords, then those A chords. What this means is breaking down the game into parts. SCV production is one part that has to be constant. If it's not, everything else fails. So I practice just making SCVs. Then I add buildings. Then I add units. If I fail to make SCVs constantly because I'm concentrating on buildings, I know that I need to go down a step in complexity and concentrate on making SCVs again. My eyes need to go between the mini-map and the supplies in the top right. If they don't, if I'm too overwhelmed, I go down one step in complexity again. It's boring and it's frustrating, but I need to learn those basics until they just happen by themselves if I ever want to be good. So I'm just playing against the AI, practicing the basics over and over again.

I long for the day I can macro while doing fifty other things on the map, which in this analogy would be equal to singing while playing a complicated song on the guitar. And the only way to get there is to practice those basics over and over again.

Breakout

Yesterday, I had what I consider my first real win. I've been playing a few games with Pka, who has been really nice and helpful. He has played Zerg while I've been practicing my Terran. Usually, he beats me quite quickly with a good composition to match anything I build. I've read more about builds and macro, and in the last game we played yesterday, I figured out what my main problem was. I was trying to do way too much at once, and I don't have the macro to build banshees and harass, tech wildly, scout and respond to his units in an appropriate way.

I decided to throw all that out the window and just concentrate on getting a lot of stuff.

We played on Korthal Compound. I took my natural and built a few tech labs to get marauders, but other than that, I just walled myself in with bunkers and supply depots to concentrate on building more barracks and a few factories. I didn't even scout. Just building SCVs and getting more marines. I waited for him to attack, repelled his forces twice and then moved out with my big army of mainly marines, a few marauders and some medivacs. Everything except the medivacs died, but I managed to kill almost all of his zerglings, drones and banelings with stim and kiting, and I even took out his main hatchery and natural. At that point, I didn't worry about transitions or timing an expansion or responding appropriately to what I saw during my push. All I did was build more marines, and since I had a ridiculous amount of minerals, I scanned all his possible expansions. I threw up a third CC only when I was almost completely mined out.

I did one more big push with all my bio units after about 30 minutes. This was the longest a game had ever lasted for me, and as far as I could tell, I was way ahead in killed units but with a much worse economy since I didn't expand, and most likely far behind in tech. My factories pumped out a few tanks to protect my essential third expansion but he found it and killed almost all my SCVs while I was moving my main army out. I continued with my main army, attacked his weakest hatchery, killed a ton of stuff in my way and was only just repelled. With creep everywhere on the map except my home base and natural, almost no SCVs and both bases mined out, I just went all-in with about a dozen marines, six tanks, a few marauders and medivacs. I took down one hatchery with no real opposition, and all of a sudden he said "gg" and left.

I was stunned. I thought that this was a desperate last push before he overran me, but he had no units left to deal with my tanks. The game had lasted for 38 minutes, I had killed over 600 of his units while losing about 200. I had no idea that I was winning. But I felt so good afterwards. I was proud of myself for continuing to macro during my attacks, every time an army was taken out I had new marines at home. There were other obvious problems, at one point I had 2000 minerals for example. But despite all my errors, I managed to keep pushing and win in the end. I was exhausted, sweaty and shaking but completely overjoyed.

I'm watching these videos on Team Liquid now, made by the wonderful user Filter. They're really helping me a lot, and I'm practicing against the computer just to make a good basic build. Nothing fancy, just macro and timing. I've also begun a trial with European Fun Clan, a BF3 clan who has just expanded to Starcraft II. Being a single player gamer usually, I'm looking forward to getting to know these people. The clan leader MylilPwny has been awesome and really nice to me. But I guess that with a two year old running around the house, he is used to handling noobs :)

Outbreak

I just started playing my placement matches, still as Terran, after a few practice games against other novices. No matter how bad I was, the people I met were worse. I played against a Protoss who had a mothership and a few zealots at the ten minute mark - and nothing else. I decided to hop straight into placement matches against actual ladder players, and man, am I getting my ass kicked!

It's wonderful.

I've played four games and won one against another new player. The other three thoroughly crushed me. I saved the replays and watched them. It's obvious why I'm losing. They execute their build plans well, their macros slip less than mine, and most importantly, they can multitask. If I scout, I lose my macro. If I don't scout, I have no idea what to build. Before I started playing online, I watched a lot of games and read about builds on forums and wikis. I understand the basics of good builds - in theory. My last game was against the player Pka, who was nice enough to stay around afterwards to talk to me. Pka pointed out a few of my mistakes. I built my first SD at 9 food, not 10. I know that this is bad, but it slipped my mind in the game. I didn't expand. I thought that the Orbital Command requires gas since my newbie brain confused gas cost with build time, so I built a refinery first. I've done this in at least five games now. In the practice games, this didn't matter, I won anyway. But against real players, all my flaws become glaringly obvious.

That is why I love losing. You can't improve if you trick yourself into feeling "Gee, I sure am better than all these other players fresh off the campaign". Sure, it felt nice to crush some other newbies with my small theoretical knowledge from wikis and forums, but it didn't make me improve. Obviously I'm not arrogant enough to think that I know even the basics. But the things I've read are starting to make sense, and I think that the way to go is to simply keep playing, losing and watching replays until I have enough experience to transform what I've learned into actual practical knowledge.

Gates of Hell

It’s 2012 and I’m playing Starcraft for the first time. It’s been 14 years since the first game was released. I thought I’d take a moment before I write anything else and tell you why it took me this long.

I’ve been a gamer since I was a kid, but not a hardcore one. I was raised with a NES controller in my hand and kept playing console games until around 2000, when I got my first decent PC at age 13. I dabbled a bit in different genres, but I fell in love with two of them, RPGs and Grand strategy. I want to make the distinction between Grand and Real-time strategy clear. My favourite game of all time is Europa Universalis III, but it’s nothing like Starcraft. You play a country on an epic scale, making long term decisions with very little microing, you can pause whenever you want, think about your decisions for an eternity, and a game can last for 40 hours. The only RTS I’ve played was a little bit of Red Alert 2 in my early teens. Starcraft had always been something intriguing, but frightening. Even back in 2000, Starcraft felt like a vague mass of complexity that everyone else had years of experience with. Since then, that feeling has only grown. I hadn’t given the game a lot of thought, but now and then I’d thought about starting to play, but it just felt too much, too complicated. Too late.

Then Day[9] happened. I’m a big fan of Felicia Day, and I stumbled upon Day[9]‘s stream where he played Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning with her. Here was a guy just beaming with positive energy and joy, entertaining and captivating, I had to check out what he was doing. I actually started watching a few Day[9] dailies without understanding a thing. But it didn’t matter, I was pulled in by his joy. Then I watched his 100th daily and it almost made me cry. Instead of the vague scary mass I talked about earlier, Starcraft now had a face and a voice, and I couldn’t resist it. I know how happy good games make me, and I wanted to feel what he feels.

I bought Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty a week ago today. I’ve just completed the single player campaign on Normal, and I haven’t done anything else except a few challenges. I haven’t even gone online yet. There’s still so much to learn, and I will be writing about my learning techniques and approach to the game. I hope that it can inspire other newbies and be an entertaining read for veterans, watching me stumble and curse my way through the basics. I also hope that I can look back at this and laugh one day. I’m not trying to become a pro, I’m not even planning on becoming really good. I just want to learn as much as possible because it’s a challenge and a fun, complex game. Most of all, I want to feel the joy that Day[9] feels when he opens up a game.