Whether you play StarCraft II from home or on a stage in front of thousands of people, replays can be powerful tools for improving your game. Replay analysis has proven so integral to the competitive StarCraft II experience over the years that replay analysis tools such as SC2Gears and GGTracker have become very popular within the community. These tools are incredibly helpful for measuring a vast array of your stats, and using that information to hone your game expertise. With this in mind, we worked hard to improve on the amount and types of data included in StarCraft II replay files so that you can get even more in-depth with your replay analysis.

Starting with Patch 2.0.8, replay files will contain much more information, and we'd like to share some of those details with you today. In order to do this, we collaborated with the fine folks behind GGTracker to put together a preview for just a few of the awesome game stats and performance metrics that can now be pulled from our new-and-improved replay files.

Army Strength & Battles

Currently, GGTracker's Army Strength chart allows you to see which units were in your army at any point during a game. After patch 2.0.8, these graphs will also show when combat took place during each match. Battles are indicated as shaded regions on the Army Strength chart below.

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The information found in the Army Strength graph will help you determine not only when engagements occurred throughout the game, but plenty of other details about each battle as well. One such example can be found by hovering your mouse cursor over any shaded area of the chart, which will display the amount of resources lost by each player during that period of combat – including army, workers, and buildings. You can also see the unit composition of each army at any point in the game, and view a minimap that tracks unit movement and where they were lost in combat. To experience these interactive features for yourself, click over to the GGTracker page for this match.

Economy Management

One of the keys to improving as a player, especially for those who are new to the game, is to focus on building a strong economy and spending your resources as efficiently as possible. With the improvements we've made to replays, along with a few of GGTracker's new charts, you'll be able to do just that.

Not only will it be easier to analyze your mineral and vespene gas income using these charts, but you'll also be able pinpoint the exact moments during a game where you began floating too many resources. You can also use them to see how many unspent resources you banked, which could have been better spent on units, structures, or upgrades, over the course of an entire game.

Spending Skill

Among the many stats that GGTracker accounts for, the Spending Skill measurement is one of its most intriguing and one that many players have found useful for leveling up their play. This measurement is an adaptation of the intricate Spending Quotient metric introduced here, and allows you to see how your economy management skills stack up against other players on a range from Bronze to Grand Master, as well as track your improvement over time in this aspect of StarCraft II gameplay.

Previously, there was a slight delay between the time a replay was uploaded to GGTracker and when the spending quotient data from that replay could be compiled and displayed. Today, patch 2.0.8 eliminates the wait. Replay enhancements from the patch have made extracting this data from replay files a more fluid process, and allow for near-instant display of your Spending Skill data​.

As a final note, we're thrilled to announce that we've open-sourced our Python s2protocol project to help give budding data miners a leg up in writing their own analysis tools. We’re very excited to see what you can do with it, and how your hard work will help community-driven analysis tools continue to improve.

The information we've shared with you today merely scratches the surface in terms of what's possible for the future of StarCraft II replays. We're going to continue to expand and improve on replay files going forward, so be sure to keep a close eye on your favorite analysis tools to stay up to date with all the latest improvements. If you’re looking to start analyzing your games on a higher level, GGTracker and SC2Gears are ready for your patch 2.0.8 replays today.