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Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

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Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#91

Post by aGHz »

artmageddon wrote: post #77
tallanvor wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dune II was definitely influenced by Herzog Zwei, but not everyone had a Genesis, and I don't think Herzog Zwei really had a concept of base management or resource gathering, which have obviously become integral to the RTS games today.

You're right, it wasn't like most RTS games we know today. Herzog Zwei had little bases scattered through the map that could be thought of as territories, and you'd have to capture them with troops(both the player and AI would compete for these as it allowed further expansion, healing, etc.). You could order up defensive / offensive units as "credits" trickled in over time at a fixed rate(I don't think there was any…

That sounds very much like the more modern DOS game Z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game). It eschewed the Dune 2 RTS mechanics that had already become dogma by then and I distinctly remember finding it refreshing. (I grew up on DOS so I didn't know anything about the Genesis).

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#93

Post by nostrademons »

martindale wrote: post #89

I figured this would be easy to hack, and I was right: 1) Insert jQuery into the search results page by using this bookmarklet: javascript:void(function(){if(!document.getElementById('jQscript')){var%20jQscript=document.createElement('script');jQscript.id='jQscript';jQscript.src=' https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.mi... ;}}()); 2) use the console to execute the following, moving all zerglings…

When we were code-reviewing it, we had a bunch of fun trying to hack it programmatically and sharing ridiculously high scores (things like 12,000 zerglings killed). It's not even as hard as you mention: you can simulate a mouseclick on all zergling divs programmatically, and instantly clear the screen of every wave.

Then I went and just entered the code to pop up a ShareBox programmatically on the JS console, letting me edit the share message to whatever I wanted it to be. "I took down 1,853,642.93 zerglings with 3.14 * 10^42 APM." And I didn't even need to play the game!

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#94

Post by artmageddon »

aGHz wrote: post #91
artmageddon wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, it wasn't like most RTS games we know today. Herzog Zwei had little bases scattered through the map that could be thought of as territories, and you'd have to capture them with troops(both the player and AI would compete for these as it allowed further expansion, healing, etc.). You could order up defensive / offensive units as "credits" trickled in over time at a fixed rate(I don't think there was any…

That sounds very much like the more modern DOS game Z: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z_(video_game) . It eschewed the Dune 2 RTS mechanics that had already become dogma by then and I distinctly remember finding it refreshing. (I grew up on DOS so I didn't know anything about the Genesis).

I might have to try it out - it looks more refined than Herzog was :)

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#95

Post by oso96_2000 »

TheCapn wrote: post #70
TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

APM counter is a nice touch as well :). (APM stands for Actions Per Minute, where Actions in StarCraft are input events that do something, like selecting an unit or ordering it to attack. Professional players tend to have >200 APM).

200 is on the low side? I'm amateur and hit that commonly during games. I think JulyZerg was on record to hit 800 at one point. Lord only knows how that was physically possible. I would credit the source to TeamLiquid's Wiki (I believe) but I cannot search it while at work.

To avoid confusion, blizzard recently added something called EPM (effective actions per minute). Those are the one who counts. APM can be spammed or increased a lot by, for example, selecting all the larva in all your hatcheries and making units pressing one key. Pro players have a constant ~200 APM, not only for those moments.

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#97

Post by martindale »

nostrademons wrote: post #93
martindale wrote: post #89

I figured this would be easy to hack, and I was right: 1) Insert jQuery into the search results page by using this bookmarklet: javascript:void(function(){if(!document.getElementById('jQscript')){var%20jQscript=document.createElement('script');jQscript.id='jQscript';jQscript.src=' https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.0/jquery.mi... ;}}()); 2) use the console to execute the following, moving all zerglings…

When we were code-reviewing it, we had a bunch of fun trying to hack it programmatically and sharing ridiculously high scores (things like 12,000 zerglings killed). It's not even as hard as you mention: you can simulate a mouseclick on all zergling divs programmatically, and instantly clear the screen of every wave. Then I went and just entered the code to pop up a ShareBox programmatically on the JS console, letting…

Yeah, you had the fortunate ability to view the non-minified version. ;)

My first approach was the mouseclick (using $('.zr_zergling_container').click()) but for whatever reason that wouldn't work. I got fed up and just decided to try moving the zerglings to a clickable location. Ha!

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#98

Post by slyn »

hackermom wrote: post #56
blyuher wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to APM: "Actions per minute is the number of actions (such as selecting units or issuing an order) completed within a minute of gameplay in real time strategy games, most notably in Starcraft. High APM is often associated with skill, as it can indicate that a player both knows what to do in the game and has the manual dexterity to carry it out. Software has been developed to analyze players' APM in these games. Be…

APM trivia: there was a brief moment in-between two patches in Heroes of Newerth - a popular DoTA clone - in where moving your "hero" to a new location on the map counted as an action. Players simply stepping around rapidly right where they were standing would increase their APM indefinitely.

I believe technically this would be considered APM in all games. In starcraft 1+2 even selecting a control group is considered an action, so simply hiting 1 2 3 4 5 in succession without building units or changing rallies or really doing anything would count as 5 actions.

eAPM, or effective APM is a more advanced attempt to filter out spammy actions (as you describe) and was made up a bit after APM first came out as a statistic and people started gaming the APM stat to try and inflate their egos.

In SC2 there is a bug on the live patch where the APM tab in replays or live games shows the eAPM stat, and the eAPM tab shows the APM stat due to some silly mixup that made it past QA.

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#99

Post by getsat »

whileonebegin wrote: post #72
9diov wrote: post #28

It is a nice touch how originally there are 6 zerglings coming out and others came in pair. For anyone who never played Starcraft: zerglings are created in pair, two per egg and the maximum number of eggs are 3. A player who attempts to do a zergling rush wait for the first 3 eggs to be available, hatch them and subsequently make a new pair of zerglings as soon as a new egg is available.

I would have liked Google's implementation more if instead of clicking the little O's to kill them, you get to instead make buildings that produce G's or something to defend. Clicking the O's isn't really starcrafty.

I guess you've never tried to focus fire/snipe banelings that are part of a zerg army moving towards your marine bio force. Accurate clicking is very Starcrafty.

Re: Zerg Rush Google Easter Egg

#100

Post by doktrin »

DanBC wrote: post #19
doktrin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the 'zerg' meme originates from Starcraft. It's been commonly used (often pejoratively) in gaming circles to describe situations in which superior numbers dictated the outcome of an encounter. On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Edit : I was kind of surprised to see this meme explicitly explained. I've always thou…

> On an unrelated note, it's rather depressing to think of the original StarCraft game as being something 'old people' remember. I'm 29. Do you remember a time before Google? Google was started the same year as Starcraft was released - 1998. (Weirdly Armageddon and Deep Impact were released in 1998) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_in_film ) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998 )

I remember Lycos, Altavista, Excite, Infoseek and Yahoo as being the search engines I used throughout middle school. I don't think I began using Google until 99 or so.

However, I also remember using BBS systems. TradeWars 2002, anyone?

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