TerranCraft is eight year old.

It is the time of the year when I give myself a pat on the back for keeping the site running. Making original content in StarCraft is hard.

Many things have happened in the last twelve months. Everyone is coping with covid-19 as well as they can. It saddens me when some of you messaged me that you lost your  someone or your job. I try to help a little bit here and there wherever I can. Hopefully, with our help, the researchers can come up with a vaccine soon.

I’m sure many of you are playing even more StarCraft in this lock down period. The virtual nature of StarCraft makes it less affected by the covid-19 situation than other entertainment. Despite the delay, GSL still goes on. Team Liquid StarCraft League is back too! I wonder how would ESL adapt, as flying and big crowd are probably discouraged or even banned in most places in the world. Many content creators are still putting out good content in this difficult time.

I cancelled my wedding because of covid-19. This led to a series of inconvenience. The wedding event company refused to refund my deposit, even though a new bill was passed to aid consumers to collect their deposit. This is likely to escalate to a tribunal. The cancellation delays us from solemnising the marriage, and it directly affects my fiancee’s visa and permanent residency applications. With her short term visa ending, she will have to take a big gamble on her health and get on a plane. It is also unclear when she can return, because we are essentially under a lock down. My major field experiment got suspended too.

Luckily, we did our pre-wedding photoshoot just before things got really bad.

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I posted 36 articles in the last twelve months, and the number is notably lower than the 48 articles I posted twelve months before that. However, I believe I traded quantity for quality. I hope you’ve noticed the improvement in quality. Quite a number of articles this year are more in-depth than my average articles. This TvT opening article is a good example, as it demonstrates tremendous effort in research, attention to details, and a unique perspective. Getting the acknowledgement that I had outdone myself made me happy.

I also enjoyed collaborating with others this year. The Faster is not Better article received lots of attention. Much credit goes to the other contributors of the series: Neuro, brownbear, and negativezero. The discussion on the Pylon show with Artosis and crew was a good round up on the topic. The whole series took a lot of effort. It seems like many love the format of having multiple articles from different authors on one specific topic. I may do it again in the future if I can find an interesting topic.

The interview with Sujai of the SWARM project was refreshing. As a behavioral scientist, I hope I helped to bridge the community of behavioral research and StarCraft. Maybe I should follow up on their findings. The discussion on the July community update with brownbear, Gemini, and Neuro was enjoyable too.

I also finally completed the article on the concept of build order blocks. It is something that I had in mind for years, but I struggled to explain it well enough for me to post it. The concept of build order blocks complements the concept of convergent points very well, and they are fundamental ideas of macro in StarCraft. I did a video with ESChamp on this concept (part of the full video).

A few Chinese StarCraft players (绝迹 ,Sprite, 知識と日陰の少女) had translated quite a number of my articles and shared them on a Chinese forum consistently. I’m very impressed with the quality of the translation, and their additional side notes are helpful for the Chinese readers. Thank you and good job.

Last but not least, thank you very much to everyone who has supported me via  PayPal and Patreon. I’m particularly touched by those who had been following my site since the beginning. A few said they didn’t have the mean to support the site way back, but they can do so now financially. Really happy that you guys are doing well.

Stay home, stay safe. Play StarCraft.

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If you enjoyed this article, I’d love you to share it with one friend. You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you really like my work, you can help to sustain the site by contributing via PayPal and Patreon. You can also support me and enjoy quality tea with a 15% discount at AFKTea by using the “TERRAN” code. See you in the next article!