What is Project Revolution? Project Revolution is a Starcraft to Warcraft III Total Conversion that will convert Warcraft III into Starcraft: Brood War without violating any intellectual property laws. More streamlined, they have developed 3D models of Starcraft units, buildings, attack effects, tilesets, Interface(GUI) and doodads to mimic Starcraft: Broodwar sprites. The Total Conversion will run a custom Artificial Intelligence (AI) script, making it playable in the Warcraft III Engine. The developers of this mod are not part of Blizzard Entertainment in any way. They are fans working for fans. The mod will be free to download once released. The developers's names will have "|PR" next to their name so that you can keep track of who is talking in the following Q&A.

The following fansites were present during the Q&A:

- rise (SCLegacy)
- Medievaldragon (Blizzplanet) as GG-MD
- Mazor – gosugamers.net
- Physician – pgtour.net
- AreS – pgtour.net
- Shihatsu – broodwar.de
- PuertoRican – ggl.com/index.php
- Army – meetyourmakers.com/
- JamesH – Cyber-athlete Amateur League

Project Revolution Developers - Snowflake Entertainment:
Konstantin - management
Skizot - management
Berry2K - marketing
TrueZooKeeper - graphics
Cooler - coding

Project Revolution Q&A Roundtable

rise|SCL:
First question, MD. We will then discuss it for a minute or two...

GG-MD:
What is Blizzard Entertainment’s stand with this project? We have seen other projects get a cease and desist letter?

Konstantin|PR:
We as a team have sent a formal letter requesting their standpoint on the project, but they haven't replied yet. We know they know about us. They have commented a number of times on the Battle.net forums, but they haven't stated anything official yet, so we don't know.

rise|SCL:
Let's open this one for discussion. I know the fansite program is now dead, but are there possible ways to send a much-clearer message?

Konstantin|PR:
The letter was sent about a year ago I believe, so we're not really expecting a reply anymore

GG-MD:
Who did you send it to? George Wang?

Skizot|PR:
We sent a copy to Mr. Wang, and an inside associate I would prefer to remain nameless.

Konstantin|PR:
Well, the most obvious way of making them show their colors would be to release a demo of the mod and see how they react.

GG-MD:
Sounds good.

rise|SCL:
The ins and outs of a business. Since we happen to have fansite staff here, how do you think we could send a clear sign to Blizzard about Project Revolution? Coverage of its release?

Konstantin|PR:
Which is in no way to be understood as an announcement btw :)

Skizot|PR:
We ARE working to keep this mod as legitimate as possible with our installer requiring the CD's of all 4 games.

PGT-physician:
Does it matter really? I mean who cares- or more important why would Project Revolution care, any benefit in official recognition?

AreS|PGT:
Though I don't see any conflicting issues between Project Revolution and Blizzard, since as you said they're as legitimate as their counter-part, but there's no way to know what Blizzard has in mind until a response has been given.

GG-Mazor:
Nevertheless, the best say is probably to contact an individual of their employees, as MD says.

AreS|PGT:
I would suggest announcing a possible release date, to see if Blizzard bites.

GG-MD:
Mazor and Entropy, do you think Araxas would be able to hook them with guys above George Wang?

PGT-physician:
But he is the event manager - he doesn’t deal with mods or legal stuff

GG-MD:
Well the question was if he could hook them up with the people above. Legal department would be pretty direct.

Konstantin|PR:
Well, the upside to official recognition would of course be the comfort of knowing our work will not be in vain.

rise|SCL:
You didn't call yourself Starcraft 2, like another unfortunate - and silly - mod.

GG-Mazor:
Yes, I am quite convinced he could give them better hints, at least.

Konstantin|PR:
The way we work right now, we can never be entirely sure that blizzard won't C&D us before we can put our work out there.

Skizot|PR:
As for a possible release date, We are still unsure ourselves of a date, and we don't want to release something that would embarrass either Blizzard OR Ourselves.

PGT-physician:
A guestimation, how much in a percent (%) of Project Revolution is done?

rise|SCL:
Perhaps more than the "half-full" listed in the year-old Project Revolution FAQ?

Konstantin|PR:
We don't have a time estimate for release right now, and we can't give a percentage. If we say X% now, then in two months people will say "But you said X% two months ago!" and people will start complaining again. Give the small finger and they'll take the hand …

PGT-physician:
Well giving a straightforward answer never hurts.

Konstantin|PR:
Ok, then I'll say we were 0% done three years ago; 50% one year ago - and now we're on track with that calculation. ;)

rise|SCL:
Alright, we'll move onto Shihatsu's excellent question about Single player in Project Revolution.

Shihatsu|Bwde:
What kind of single player campaign will be implemented? The original of StarCraft, of Broodwar, both - or something totally different? Or even no single player campaign?

Skizot|PR:
Our current campaign team is planning a BRAND NEW scenario. They are planning to have a few maps, introducing new heroes, and a few surprises as well.

rise|SCL:
I can't resist that one, let's open it to discussion. :) How to go about making an original campaign, perhaps?

Konstantin|PR:
Actually we already have a lot of the staff we need. A few months ago we took on Maglok as dedicated sound artist. We also have SoundSNC whose name was not chosen by chance.

Skizot|PR:
We had a member of the team bring us a story he wrote and we decided that it would make a good campaign. ;)

rise|SCL:
Is there a current creative direction (e.g. storyline idea?) to the campaign?

Skizot|PR:
We'll have to leave that one unanswered; we have to leave a few surprises ;)

GGL-PuertoRican:
How many campaign levels will there be for each race once the project is finished? And do you see any expansions in the future for more campaign levels?

Konstantin|PR:
We'll keep that information closed for now, but rest assured we plan on making it a long and worthwhile campaign.

Shihatsu|Bwde:
Will your campaign bring up some old friends like Jim Raynor or the Queen of Blades?

rise|SCL:
Can you answer that one? Pretty please? :)

PGT-physician:
A single mode campaign would actually be a huge success, landslide way to do a debut, props Project Revolution!

Konstantin|PR:
Not likely, we want to avoid violating intellectual property. There's another reason why official acknowledgement would be a good thing.

Skizot|PR:
The campaign is set in an area relatively untouched by the main campaign storyline and hopefully will not conflict with a hypothetical Starcraft 2.

AreS|PGT:
How would you say the time spent on Project Revolution has affected your personal lives?

Konstantin|PR:
We’ll let the whole of the present team answer this one.

Skizot|PR:
Well it has taught me a great deal of stuff, such as learning to manage time and keep stuff organized. I was able to find time to make a baby, so I think it hasn't been TOO hampering ;)

TrueZookeeper|PR:
Well, I live as before. Project Revolution only helps me - I get experience. As for time, I always can take an hour from life for the rise of StarCraft.

Berry2K|PR:
As for me, I've lost many a good night's sleep to this project. I can definitely say a lot of time, emotion and effort has gone into it; but in return I think I've got a great deal of experience and fun (and sometimes frustration) out of it all.

Cooler|PR:
As for me Project Revolution has given me experience with other talented coders and artists which is something that I indeed see important. This is because I would like to become a game coder after I exit college.

Konstantin|PR:
Personally, it has taught me a great deal about how much work you actually have to put into making a game. I have come to respect the people working on games for a living.

GG-MD:
To play the game we need StarCraft and WarCraft 3 CDs. However, does this mean we need two CD-ROM drives loaded with each Game CD simultaneously? Or can you have only one CD drive and still play?

Konstantin|PR:
You will only need one CD in the drive at the time you play. Our installer will ask for the other discs in turn to copy the necessary files into the Game folder - but only during installation.

rise|SCL:
You're using the Starcraft and Brood War expansion CDs for the music, correct?

Konstantin|PR:
That is correct.

Skizot|PR:
And sound effects.

GG-MD:
So, your installer will ask for StarCraft (original), Starcraft: Broodwar expansion, WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos. Will it ask for Warcraft 3: Frozen Throne expansion?

Skizot|PR:
It will expect Frozen Throne to be installed already. You will need the other CD's as a form of piracy protection.

GG-MD:
If a player does not have one of these CDs, they won't be able to play the game, or will they still get to play minus the files/sounds?

Skizot|PR:
We want to make sure the players own all the originals before they can play our version of the game. We don't want people to see our mod as a means to play StarCraft without paying Blizzard for the game we technically copied from them.

PGT-physician:
Anyone involved offline in game development, apart from Project Revolution, i.e. career to be or current? Offline manner of speech… (irl etc).

Skizot|PR:
As it is, none of us are currently involved in making a retail game.

PGT-physician:
Ah, they did not fall for it! Fan or corporate was the question. Good reply. Thanks.

PGT-physician:
Anyone going in the future into game development or all as a hobby?

Konstantin|PR:
I think some are considering it.

rise|SCL:
With the raw talent, I would hope so.

GG-MD:
Thanks for the answer. This not only educates the player base on what they need, but also might encourage Blizzard to accept it, maybe not publicly, but enough to get their lawyers quiet on the matter.

Shihatsu|Bwde:
What about the speed of the engine? Will it be as fast as Broodwar, or the normal game speed of WarCraft 3? Some mods kind of "boost" the engine...

Skizot|PR:
We are trying to keep the game speed as close as possible to Starcraft's speeds. We are trying every method possible to keep it that way. Granted, some things have to be normalized a bit first.

rise|SCL:
We can all be BoXeR on your mod? :)

Konstantin|PR:
hehe, you wish :)

Skizot|PR:
Basically, game speed is hard-coded in Warcraft 3. We could scale unit attacks and time to make it play faster but Warcraft 3 has a hard-coded movement limit of 522.

rise|SCL:
We have a good one in the pipes. PeurtoRican, give us your question!

GGL-PuertoRican:
In StarCraft, there’s 8 people at the most allowed in a game. I was wondering if there would be more than 8 allowed in a game with your Project Revolution?

Konstantin|PR:
Yes. We'll be using the Warcraft 3 player Limit of 12 players per game, theoretically. I'm saying "theoretically" because Project Revolution will be much more demanding on hardware than Warcraft 3 was; and it might not be applicable to play with 11 other people. The Warcraft 3 engine is programmed in a way that will just stop handling requests when a certain amount of units is in-game. The orders will just queue up and you'll have a bunch of idling units all over the place. We're doing our best to make Project Revolution a great playing experience, though.

rise|SCL:
Laggy Warcraft 3 nightmares, anyone? If lag can be dealt with, do you have plans for multiplayer modes?

Konstantin|PR:
We don't have any plans for any extended game modes, but I'm sure players will come up with a great deal of custom maps. Concerning lag, we'll do what we can, but most of the networking is hard-coded in the engine and we don't have any access to it.

PGT-physician:
Will you guys use custom Artificial Intelligence (AI) script, or use the original WarCraft 3 AI?

Skizot|PR:
Custom. The default AI can't do it.

PGT-physician:
Who is coding the AI?

Skizot|PR:
AIAndy.

rise|SCL:
Figures. :)

PGT-physician:
(I can send him lots of help)

Skizot|PR:
(I don't think he'll need it, he's gosu, but couldn't hurt)

Shihatsu|Bwde:
What do you think of the balance of your mod? I guess it has to be adjusted to the Warcraft 3 engine?

Konstantin|PR:
We'll definitely take balance seriously, and we know it'll need some adjusting to the new engine. We plan on running a number of play tests to make sure we do the famed StarCraft equilibrium justice. But I'll have to say now, that we'll have to compromise here and there.

Shihatsu|Bwde:
This will be a hard job, best wishes for that task.

Konstantin|PR:
Thanks.

GGL-PuertoRican:
Do you plan to add any units to the project, or just revamp the existing ones?

rise|SCL:
Interesting point to the balance issue.

Skizot|PR:
Not at this time. If we do add in new units, they will come in a future release and not the initial one.

Konstantin|PR:
We don't plan on adding new units. It has been our philosophy from the beginning to keep StarCraft the way it is.

GGL-PuertoRican:
I'd like to see Kerrigan owning some shit up in Melee games.

rise|SCL:
Haha, luckily Project Revolution battles temptation!

Konstantin|PR:
Well, if Kerrigan was in melee, no one would play Protoss or Terran anymore, would they? ;)

rise|SCL:
Speaking units, there’s a favorite in the mix. James’ question:

CAL|JamesH:
What about burrowing units and the ability for lurkers to attack?

Skizot|PR:
We have already gotten the borrow and attack for the lurker completed. It works just the way you remember it, SPIKY DEATH!

CAL|JamesH:
What about being detected while burrowed?

Skizot|PR:
They will show up just as a burrowed Scarab in Warcraft 3 would.

rise|SCL:
Our final question, from Army.

MYM|Army:
From your test sessions, how is the feeling compared to StarCraft, concerning the Warcraft 3 engine jump. Is it a big difference like for example from Counter Strike to Counter Strike Source, or do you think you have it pretty much figured out. What do the Closed Beta testers say?

Konstantin|PR:
Well, the current build is still missing a lot of features, so you can't *treat* it like StarCraft yet, but the feel, the atmosphere is definitely coming along. Testers find themselves trying to zoom in on their units when they play the "old" SC and all the fancy stuff we can do in 3D really adds to the depths of the experience. Thanks for reading! We hope you enjoyed this glimpse into Project: Revolution.

Thanks to the Snowflake Entertainment modding developers. They will soon released a new FAQ page for fans to read up before announcing an upcoming Public Q&A. This Q&A was closed only to fansites, but the public one will be in the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned!

Project Revolution's
Screenshots Gallery

Project Revolution Q&A Transcript