kalababa
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I've wanted to write something like this for a long time, but I never got around to it; I always found some excuse—that nobody would be interested, or then there was no time, or no desire. But now, on this cold evening, with nothing but a tablet and Microsoft Office, why not write a few lines? Don't look for anything extraordinary in this text; it's quite simple—it's just the story of one tournament.
Chapter 1. The Beginning
This story should begin with my school years. Once, coming home from a pioneer camp, I discovered a real computer in my room! This was back when people everywhere were swapping cartridges for Dendy and Sega. Oh, the emotions I felt from the blue screen of the DOS navigator. It seemed to me that this devilish machine could do everything: here's your calculator, here's your text editor, and there was even a built-in Tetris in the menu. I was certain that I would only use the computer for studying, but boy was I wrong =) After playing Tetris for nnn-number of hours, I realized that one game was a bit too few for a $1000 machine, especially since Tetris was black and white, and I had a color 14” monitor from an absolutely hilarious company called Funay =))) Hard times came; I had to save on school breakfasts to buy floppies and record new toys. And then came that wonderful day—I don't even remember where or from whom—but one of the first recorded games turned out to be KB2; many probably remember it, it's a Russian turn-based strategy, a dead ringer for Heroes. And since then, my love for turn-based strategies has remained in my heart forever. Then came Heroes 2; I struggled and fumbled with them until I discovered the ghost imba; the funniest part was that when there were more than 10k of them, my computer simply froze, so I had to delete them after every battle.
Years passed—my parents still believed that the computer was for my studies. For my school performance, I needed a CD-ROM, a sound card, and a new 1.2Gb hard drive =)) And then the glorious times arrived; Heroes 3-Erafia was released. Oh, I'll never forget the day I managed to complete the first map; at school, they simply didn't believe me that when completing a map, you could proudly enter your name into the table. And paradoxically, the walkthrough tactic was simple—all money into economy; the Capitol is our everything. There wasn't even a thought of splitting stacks into ones; at most, it was a wait with all troops so that the horde of zombies would crawl into the range of the Grand Elves' shots. Hard times began—hotseat with 4-5 people until late at night, arguments and fights not only in the computer game, but also beside the monitor: "why the hell did he take my chest, we're in an alliance!" And as you've guessed, back then we played M maps, only we had no actual rules; the concept of shifted guards didn't even exist. Of course, we drew our own maps, even balanced ones. One of my works is even on HeroPortal, though under a different nickname; I uploaded it somewhere around 2002.
College started; Heroes, like all computer games, took a back seat. But in the third year, I remembered Heroes again. During classes, someone told me about a super difficult map called Empiretheworld2; I had never encountered such a cool map—everything was thought out to the smallest detail, awesome plot, awesome drawing, several ways of completion; in short, it was the best thing about the winter session of the third year. I only managed to complete this map a year later on the 100,500th attempt; then I relived those childhood feelings from when I completed my first map; I thought I was the coolest Heroes player, that I had no equal.
And finally, 2010 arrived. In the autumn of that year, Sc2 was released; how I awaited this game. And so I'm crawling in the bronze league, being all-ined and pushed by pimply schoolkids. What Am I Doing Wrong?!! I went to Google, started looking for strats, forums, demos. And the very first site on Google was sc2tv. So I registered there and chose the nickname NewGamer, because I really was a new player in SC2. On this wonderful site, I learned what streams and VODs were. Oh, how many evenings I spent watching streams, it's scary to even imagine. I smoothly crawled from bronze to platinum, and there my growth stopped; I lacked APM and multitasking. I felt a bit gloomy, but I didn't stop watching streams. While watching, I always thought: if only I could play SC2 well, I would stream too—show off my skill—but alas and ah. And then one day, while reading a forum about Terrans being imba, I stumbled upon a topic called "Heroes III". There I read that it was still possible to play this wonderful game via GameRanger. And then I thought: here is my chance, I'm a "father" in Heroes—I can record VODs! I read on Google how best to do it; I couldn't think of anything better than recording a VOD without sound, and then cutting out the opponent's turn and voicing the finished material. And so, after 3-4 hours of work, I recorded my first VOD! I crushed some nub on an M map, playing through the Capitol. In my VOD, I used Starcrafter slang, and with this, I caused a sensation. On the forum, I was asked to record more VODs, and I went hunting for another nub. This time I recorded a VOD with music in the background; the success was overwhelming. My 3 VODs were posted on the sc2tv main page. In one day, there were more than 1000 downloads. And then the sc2tv admin knocked on my Skype and offered me to stream in fan-streams. That was when a new era began for me—"Heroes Streaming".
To be continued…
Chapter 1. The Beginning
This story should begin with my school years. Once, coming home from a pioneer camp, I discovered a real computer in my room! This was back when people everywhere were swapping cartridges for Dendy and Sega. Oh, the emotions I felt from the blue screen of the DOS navigator. It seemed to me that this devilish machine could do everything: here's your calculator, here's your text editor, and there was even a built-in Tetris in the menu. I was certain that I would only use the computer for studying, but boy was I wrong =) After playing Tetris for nnn-number of hours, I realized that one game was a bit too few for a $1000 machine, especially since Tetris was black and white, and I had a color 14” monitor from an absolutely hilarious company called Funay =))) Hard times came; I had to save on school breakfasts to buy floppies and record new toys. And then came that wonderful day—I don't even remember where or from whom—but one of the first recorded games turned out to be KB2; many probably remember it, it's a Russian turn-based strategy, a dead ringer for Heroes. And since then, my love for turn-based strategies has remained in my heart forever. Then came Heroes 2; I struggled and fumbled with them until I discovered the ghost imba; the funniest part was that when there were more than 10k of them, my computer simply froze, so I had to delete them after every battle.
Years passed—my parents still believed that the computer was for my studies. For my school performance, I needed a CD-ROM, a sound card, and a new 1.2Gb hard drive =)) And then the glorious times arrived; Heroes 3-Erafia was released. Oh, I'll never forget the day I managed to complete the first map; at school, they simply didn't believe me that when completing a map, you could proudly enter your name into the table. And paradoxically, the walkthrough tactic was simple—all money into economy; the Capitol is our everything. There wasn't even a thought of splitting stacks into ones; at most, it was a wait with all troops so that the horde of zombies would crawl into the range of the Grand Elves' shots. Hard times began—hotseat with 4-5 people until late at night, arguments and fights not only in the computer game, but also beside the monitor: "why the hell did he take my chest, we're in an alliance!" And as you've guessed, back then we played M maps, only we had no actual rules; the concept of shifted guards didn't even exist. Of course, we drew our own maps, even balanced ones. One of my works is even on HeroPortal, though under a different nickname; I uploaded it somewhere around 2002.
College started; Heroes, like all computer games, took a back seat. But in the third year, I remembered Heroes again. During classes, someone told me about a super difficult map called Empiretheworld2; I had never encountered such a cool map—everything was thought out to the smallest detail, awesome plot, awesome drawing, several ways of completion; in short, it was the best thing about the winter session of the third year. I only managed to complete this map a year later on the 100,500th attempt; then I relived those childhood feelings from when I completed my first map; I thought I was the coolest Heroes player, that I had no equal.
And finally, 2010 arrived. In the autumn of that year, Sc2 was released; how I awaited this game. And so I'm crawling in the bronze league, being all-ined and pushed by pimply schoolkids. What Am I Doing Wrong?!! I went to Google, started looking for strats, forums, demos. And the very first site on Google was sc2tv. So I registered there and chose the nickname NewGamer, because I really was a new player in SC2. On this wonderful site, I learned what streams and VODs were. Oh, how many evenings I spent watching streams, it's scary to even imagine. I smoothly crawled from bronze to platinum, and there my growth stopped; I lacked APM and multitasking. I felt a bit gloomy, but I didn't stop watching streams. While watching, I always thought: if only I could play SC2 well, I would stream too—show off my skill—but alas and ah. And then one day, while reading a forum about Terrans being imba, I stumbled upon a topic called "Heroes III". There I read that it was still possible to play this wonderful game via GameRanger. And then I thought: here is my chance, I'm a "father" in Heroes—I can record VODs! I read on Google how best to do it; I couldn't think of anything better than recording a VOD without sound, and then cutting out the opponent's turn and voicing the finished material. And so, after 3-4 hours of work, I recorded my first VOD! I crushed some nub on an M map, playing through the Capitol. In my VOD, I used Starcrafter slang, and with this, I caused a sensation. On the forum, I was asked to record more VODs, and I went hunting for another nub. This time I recorded a VOD with music in the background; the success was overwhelming. My 3 VODs were posted on the sc2tv main page. In one day, there were more than 1000 downloads. And then the sc2tv admin knocked on my Skype and offered me to stream in fan-streams. That was when a new era began for me—"Heroes Streaming".
To be continued…
