Starcraft 2 news » Arcade Highlight: Death TV

Today's Arcade Highlight features the chaotic and intense Death TV. Four players must help each other survive overwhelming odds. Simple controls, fun weapons, and constant action make this an instant hit for us. Behold Death TV in all of it's glory.

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The author was cool enough to answer our questions about his experiences creating this mod.

Traysent: Please introduce yourself! Anything you are willing to share: Age, name, location.

DeadZergling: Hello, I go by the handle DeadZergling, but you can refer to me as DZ, DeadZ, or even Deod Zerling! If you really care to know me by real name, it is Paul N. Bomar, but I won’t ever ask to be referred to by that name. I was born in 1982 which makes me old. I'm from Washington State, and have a wife and three kids.Hobbies include modding, racquet sports, and watching far too many LPs.

T: How did you get started in game design?

I would say about when I was 11 or 12, I started playing a lot of Doom 2. Somehow or another, I got a WAD editor. It was buggy as could be and I did little more than decorative box connecting at the time, but would say that was my first real start. From there I moved on to Quake, Quake 2, Brood Wars, Visual Basic/C#, and finally Starcraft II.

T: What made you want to make games with the StarCraft II editor?

DZ: I had a lot of experience using the editor from Starcraft and Brood Wars. I had made an Elements RPG map for that and a few other projects I never released. Knowing the editor was in the Starcraft Universe, and that it let me adjust a Marine to have different hit points and damage was enough for me to be interested. We had to be far more creative back in Brood Wars days for that sort of thing, so that was honestly more than enough to make me want to start.

T: What was the inspiration for Death TV?

DZ: The Brood Wars version of Smash TV, actually. I played the crap out of that back in the day. I decided then to take a good look at the SNES version, and decided to go with the more action/reaction style of game instead as the editor was more than capable of making that a reality.

T: How long did it take to complete Death TV? How many people worked on it and what roles did they have?

DZ: I would say I spent a solid 5-6 months on it over all. I could say longer, but I prefer not to count breaks. I was a one man show for the most part in terms of triggering/data/terrain work. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t get any help. I would like to thank Merc for helping with the loading screen, tutorial images and the crow model, duckies for mercilessly breaking the map and letting me know what was broken and helping improve the UI, and of course the entire SC2mapster community for the model assets, sounding board for ideas, help play testing, etc. For a more thorough listing of credits, please refer to the credits images I attached to the game.

T: Do you have any funny stories about the design process?

DZ: Yea, it is a large part why the crow is a playable character. Upon setting the character select screen, I noticed something very odd. The angle of the crow eating the fallen cow was just right so it appeared the crow was dancing to the music. It ended up being the crow’s rear bobbing back and forth or something, but it looked like that so much, I ended up making the crow a playable character. Additionally, I also decided to have Tosh join in for the dancing just because of that.

T: What was the most challenging part in the development process? How did you overcome it?

DZ: I would say some of the most challenging parts were some of the monster designs. It took more than a little effort to get tank gunners, crazy probes, snakes(tracking), snakes(descending), Overlords, and master orb and seeker orbs to behave the way I wanted them to. For most of them, I was forced to take a step back and think outside the box in order to get them functioning as well as they do now.

T: What do you feel makes your game compelling?

DZ: Aside from the cliché answer of Big Money and Big Prizes from the series, I would say the weapon choices and enemies you can fight with them are the most compelling. The weapons are all designed to be fun to use, require a different style of fighting for each weapon, and not be too powerful. The enemies are all relentless, and each have some very particular techniques to out maneuvering them. For example, the snakes (represented by the baneling/sentry models) move faster than you do, but can’t turn as fast. Additionally, shooting them causes them to pause a split second. So you can either take advantage of their poor turning, or shoot an edge of a cluster to make your way out. Great weapons, challenging but beatable enemies -- that is what Death TV is all about.

T: Besides keeping things small and simple, what advice would you give to someone who is interested in using the StarCraft II editor to make their own game?

DZ: As someone who migrated from the Brood Wars editor directly to the Starcraft II editor, I would say to keep your expectations reasonable to start. I might also suggest working with the terrain editor and trigger editor before you dive into the data editor. These tools allow you to get a lot done without a lot of confusion, and the function lookup for triggers is excellent.

The data editor on the other hand can be overwhelming. My first time looking at it, I threw my hands up and gave up a couple hours into trying. A few months later of forcing myself to use nothing but the data editor, it finally started to make more sense. It is totally doable, and others might have an easier time starting than I did, but it is by far the data editor that confuses the most people.

My advice if you really want to make your own custom Marines, Zealots, etc is to go to the units tab in the Data editor, and use the duplicate feature, it makes learning the data editor far easier.

Lastly, if you are hitting a brick wall, don’t just tough it out. There are communities out there that can help your Zealot fly, make your Archons pink and whatever you might want to do. I know there are others out there, but I exclusively got a lot of my questions answered at SC2Mapster.com.

T: How did you get people to notice your game once it was released?

DZ: I entered it in the RTC contest, played it a lot, took a shot at making a trailer for it -- that sort of fun thing. Admittedly I’m not much of an advertiser though. I just want to make great games.

T: Do you have any plans for other games or future goals as a game designer?

DZ: My current goal is finishing the RPG map for Starcraft II I started in 2012, Horologium RPG. It has a ton of work done on it, a lot of potential, but it isn’t there yet. It is currently also available on the Arcade as an Alpha. From there, I see myself diving more into an editor that favors First Person mechanics more, more into stand-alone game territory.

T: What’s the best way people can follow you and your work (Twitter, Facebook, Website, etc.)?

DZ: As fair warning, I’m not an active poster or uploader of things, nor do I keep a journal of any kind, however to this end, I have a Youtube account here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs7bH_sRxyUIhJJqf6XGL5A?view_as=public

I have an obscure forum website for my RPG here: http://horologiumrpg.forumotion.com/

And finally a Twitter account I just threw together here: @DeadZergling3

T: Do you have any favorite games on the StarCraft II Arcade?

DZ: I have really enjoyed Starcreatures, Dragon Quest RPG (a guilty pleasure…), and Elements TD in the past. I also really enjoy watching Jet Craft, if Sinvicta is the speaker.