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StarCraft: Remastered to be released Summer 2017
- K0SM0S 10y agoI can see this as a way to revive the Starcraft e-sports scene, considering how SC2 pretty much failed in this regard (not an expert myself, just reporting what I heard from commentors and pundits very much into competitive SC such as TotalBiscuit/John Bain).
- gigatexal 10y agoReally? It seems vibrant enough to me. I really enjoy watching SC2 matches.
- partycoder 10y agoStarCraft is a successful franchise. Both Starcraft I and II are excellent games with amazing playability. It never stops amazing me how creative strategies get. Blizzard itself is also a very successful company. Now, in fairness, Blizzard itself could be more successful if they paid more attention to successful mods. Defense of the ancients started as a Warcraft III map played in Battle.net, and multiple standalone versions of it were developed before Blizzard decided to implement their own game (Heroes of the Storm).
- arvinsim 10y agoI don't think the fault was with Starcraft itself. The RTS genre was pretty much superseded by the MOBA genre.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- chongli 10y agoYeah. RTS games are simply way too difficult to learn compared to MOBAs. You have to learn an entire race and at the very least a few basic build orders while you're developing this massive amount of muscle memory for macroing to keep your worker count high and your money low. Something like LoL, on the other hand, makes it pretty easy to pick up and just learn one champion, one lane, one build order and be an effective team member. It's like the difference between learning to be an offensive tackle vs learning to be head coach, offensive coordinator, and defensive coordinator all in one person.
- dkbrk 10y agoI don't know what is meant by "failed" in this context. I've been watching professional SC2 for quite a few years now. I can't speak to the size of the player base, the size of the rewards in tournaments or the number of spectators, because I know very little about those things and how they compare to other e-sports. What I can say is: the game keeps getting better. Legacy of the Void and recent patches make the game itself the best it has ever been. The players themselves keep getting better, with the standard for top-tier play reaching ever-higher levels. There is never a shortage of top-tier professional games to watch -- I watch only a fraction of the games from even the best tournaments such as the GSL, SSL and WCS because I just don't have time to see them all, no matter how good they are. I don't think Brood War "died" either, but it has seen a major resurgence recently with the introduction of the ASL. As someone who never played or watched Brood War in its heyday I find the games just as interesting to watch as SC2. I understand the level of play has similarly continued to improve, even as the game fell into relative obscurity, so a top-tier player who hadn't kept up would now find himself at a severe disadvantage against the best in the world. I strongly suspect it is the success of the ASL in revitalizing interest that has prompted Blizzard to make the decision to remaster Brood War.
- tgb 10y agoMy first question is what will they change with regards to UI and pathfinding? The original SC is very finicky by today's standards which means it'll be tough to get anyone interested for reasons other than nostalgia. But the particulars of strategy and tactics are strongly influenced by things like the maximum army size selection, the frankly bizarre path finding, etc. So making any change will alienate long term fans.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoThe article suggests they aim to make this version pretty much bug-for-bug-compatible, to retain the original feel of the game (and original strategies, which often took game's idiosyncrasies into account).
- tgb 10y agoWhoops, I actually didn't read most of the article, you're right! I went straight to starcraft.com, which has much less information (but pretty visuals).
- tux1968 10y agoRight from the short article: > ... the gameplay and balance have been precisely preserved, for an experience that will feel identical to veteran players.
- mathw 10y agoThe press release says "gameplay and balance have been precisely preserved". If that doesn't include the pathfinding algorithms, complete with bugs, I don't know what would.
- nickpeterson 10y agoIt would be nice to have a post or two from Blizzard employees to see what went into this effort. I would assume most of Starcraft was written in C++, and that performing this kind of an upgrade without impacting other aspects could be non-trivial.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago<3 yes please. Always preferred SC1 to SC2 in pretty much every regard. It's also probably the only video game in which I feel remotely competent. It will be fun to play it again, and I hope the scene will get revived enough that there are many people to play with.
- halflings 10y agoWhy did you prefer SC1? Obviously, you're not the only one with this opinion (judging by the relatively low interest SC2 gathered compared to the Brood War years), but most of the time people say vague things like "SC1 is more challenging, requires more strategy" which make me think they haven't played SC2 competitively or watched pro-players.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoMy reasons are completely unrelated to multiplayer. Primary reason - I liked the storyline of SC1 much better than of the sequel. SC1 story was pretty dark, and full of interplanetary political dramas. SC2 felt much more like fantasy in space, and focused mostly on individuals and their romantic relationships. I know I might be in minority here, but I strongly prefer stories about the world to stories about the people [0]. Secondary reason - graphical style. Again, SC1 had these dark and serious tones. In SC2, everything feels plastic and cartoonish. -- [0] - I remember someone accusing many sci-fi writers of producing "flat" characters that lack depth. My response to that is that if I wanted to read about people and their interpersonal dramas, I'd pick up romantic novels instead.
- SerLava 10y agoSC2 is better now after the expansions, but for a while it was pretty dominated by various boring and/or cheesy strategies. And SC1 has some mechanics that are almost like fighting games, which are often basically subtle bug exploits. It is VERY difficult to physically pull off some of the motions required to compete at a high level. I prefer SC2 but there are real reasons people prefer Brood War.
- tener 10y agoFunny to read press release dated for 27th March a full day before that day.
- swiley 10y agoWill LAN games still work? That was probably the biggest reason I never bought SC2.
- JDShu 10y agoAccording to the video, yes, in addition to online play.
- ioltas 10y agoLong term player here (haven't played in years though), and still having my original key and CD just one meter away from this laptop. Should we consider this version as an upgrade or a sole new game? The protocol remains the same so both SC and SC:R are compatible but it seems to me that you would need to repurchase a new key to be able to use it.
- cknight 10y agoA new game. My understanding is that SC:R will be a new purchase, while the original StarCraft Anthology becomes free for everyone. So your key won't be terribly helpful. Makes sense to me - they've put a bit of time and money in to remastering it, so they'll want a return on that. And they know plenty of people will be willing to pay for it.
- jimmaswell 10y agoYou can get the full expansions for free with a CD key of the original game on their website, I found out a while ago when I found SC1 at a thrift store.
- zouhair 10y ago
- kensai 10y agoThere is a great deal of old classic games that could be remastered. I wonder sometimes if the companies that developed them, if not defunct or totally convoluted legally, understand the goldmines they are sitting on.
- mpartel 10y agoMany have realized: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=remaster http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_4_4__12&term=rem...
- MasterScrat 10y agoThe Baldur's Gate series and other games that use the Infinity Engine are all being remade as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate:_Enhanced_Edition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldur's_Gate:_Enhanced_Editio... I love how they brought iPad compatibility as well!
- tangue 10y agoYep I would pay for Age of Empires and Rise of Rome, evebn not remastered but never found a way to buy them for a Modern'computer (sth like GOG)
- codemogul 10y agoAge of Empires, with all of the expansions, is available through Steam!
- Sir_Substance 10y agoAge of empires II is available through steam. AoE:RoR was the original and expansion, not the sequel.
- slowmovintarget 10y ago...and Starfleet Command, please. ...and The Lost Admiral, and The Perfect General...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- TheAceOfHearts 10y agoOh man, I'm super ready for this. A few weeks back I put together a new gaming PC, and now I can't contain my excitement for 4K StarCraft goodness. For a few years I followed SC2's e-sports scene, but my interest slowly died out. With this new release, just imagining all the possibilities is getting me really hyped. I'm gonna call it now and say that it's a given that we'll get a few tournaments with all the big StarCraft names. And it'll be a blast to re-play a bunch of those older UMS (Use Map Settings) games. I remember spending countless hours playing custom games. It was my first introduction to tower defense games, stacking hundreds of cannons and hoping you'd make it past one more level. And the countless challenge survival maps which required you to pull off exploits and glitches to reach the next part. Probably a bit silly, but one of the maps I remember best is Dragon Ball Z RPG. Even if they don't quite stand the test of time, getting to replay them just for nostalgia will be fun.
- keerthiko 10y agoTournaments with all the big StarCraft names never went away. They've been happening happily on the regular with good ol' Brood War: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Main_Page http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Main_Page The game has aged beautifully, thanks to great continuous patching by Blizz, keeping the game running on modern OS's without finicky behaviour. This 4K remaster in my opinion is purely icing on the BW cake rather than a burning desire of the community. From a business perspective, I think Blizzard is hoping the BW eSports scene can become more international , vibrant, and bring in some active revenue for being a much-loved game.
- edgineer 10y agoI'm glad you brought up UMS maps. They were my favorite part of SC and BW also, and I hope to see a lot of other people playing them in SC Remastered. I've uploaded my old custom map folder left dormant for years, that includes all the maps you mention. Tower defense, glitch maps (I hope the old glitches will still work!), and dragon ball Z maps. Here: https://mega.nz/#!yE9jTZYS!EegEFOhl0uycGxChVwwlJS-zrAXcAGBmC9lgkeVg1_U https://mega.nz/#!yE9jTZYS!EegEFOhl0uycGxChVwwlJS-zrAXcAGBmC...
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- kawsper 10y agoInteresting, I am not sure if I agree with the 4K decision or not, since lately I have been playing a lot of C&C RedAlert through http://www.openra.net/ http://www.openra.net/, and I kind of like the pixelated graphics, but I understand it is not for everyone. OpenRA is an open source re-implementation with newer controls, so for an example you can use middle-click for dragging the camera, they also introduced a widescreen mode, and support for modern screen resolutions. I then tried to play the original, and it felt really rough, almost unplayable.
- nol13 10y agothere's open source ra clone with active online servers!? well my day is bout wasted now
- timonovici 10y agoThere's a clone of StarCraft as well, but as far as I know it doesn't have feature parity with the original game; http://stargus.stratagus.com/ http://stargus.stratagus.com/
- nol13 10y agoNice! Had recently been playing a few skirmishes in 0 a.d. as well, (AOE clone).
- timonovici 10y agohehe, 0 A.D. is a really polished game by comparison. This stuff barely works.
- cjbprime 10y agoThe 4K graphics are still pretty pixelated.
- TrinTragula 10y agoIt's going to be perfectly playable with the old client. You can play people from both versions.
- partycoder 10y agoStarCraft was a great game but what I never liked was the fact that terrans were incredibly hard to counter. Terrans had 75 minerals missile turrets, 75 minerals vultures that come with 3 mines, far reaching siege tanks, comsat, flying buildings for vision, medics that could heal each other, medics could blind detectors, ghosts could take away energy and protoss shield with EMP, and the science vessel could be very abusive as well (irradiate ability)... A lot of those things got balanced for StarCraft II: medics were replaced by medivacs that cannot heal each other, EMP only takes 100 shield rather than all and area is smaller, turrets are more expensive. Some tricks got replaced by new ones, like using seeker missile on friendly units which seems like a bug to me. The fact that you cannot lower supply depots will be particularly annoying to people that got used to StarCraft II supply depots.
- panorama 10y agoThe game is widely considered to be well-balanced, which is in part why the game has prospered on a professional level for so long. From what you've listed, Vultures are the only problematic unit (they're the most cost-efficient unit in the game and it plays an important role in every matchup). If you're curious: Turrets struggle against small units due to their attack type, leaving Terran highly vulnerable against small, mobile Mutalisks in the mid-game. Siege tanks are gas-intensive and immobile in siege mode. Flying buildings' advantage is negligible (Zerg have flying supply depots for that matter). Medics play a very limited role in competitive play: Medic/Marine is sub-optimal against Protoss and Terran, and lately we've found that it doesn't scale well late-game against Zerg too (I find it fascinating that the meta changes dramatically even to this day)! Their blind skill has been used in professional play maybe twice in 15 years. I assume you mean Science Vessels, not Ghosts, can EMP - SVs are gas-intensive, slow, and squishy, but unfortunately are Terran's only effective high-tech unit (Ghosts are expensive and difficult to use well, Battlecruisers are expensive and slow and only see limited use in mirror matchups). On the other hand, SC2 has struggled with balance issues (perhaps still does? I don't follow it any longer). Anyway the point of this isn't to call you out on lack of BW knowledge (very few people like me care about these details anyway), but I wanted to point out potential confirmation bias: SC2 appearing to nerf or remove these problematic units is not an indication that they are problems in Brood War. Merely a coincidence, if I had to guess! :)
- jaysoncena 10y agoThey should release a mobile version as well. I think that will be a hit.
- eric_h 10y agoI can't imagine playing Starcraft with anything but a keyboard and mouse. I can't even play it with a trackpad.
- mmcwilliams 10y agoI've actually played SC1 over VNC while on a tablet, casually. With the exception of the noticeable click lag from the network, it was actually very enjoyable. I would definitely buy a version made for that form factor. EDIT: a word
- eric_h 10y agoInteresting, I can't imagine you can get the same apms on that setup. Not that I'm very good (or any good, really), just that on SC2 my numbers are terrible with a trackpad relative to my numbers with a mouse.
- mmcwilliams 10y agoIt's definitely not a feasible setup for playing against humans. You absolutely need a keyboard to play SC1/2 seriously. The use case, if I remember correctly, was the height of laziness-driven innovation for me: I wanted to play a bot match while lounging in a hammock and didn't a laptop at the time. What really struck me, though, was how suited for a smallish tablet the original game is. If you dumb down the interface just a little it would be flawless. I've played around with a few mobile or tablet-based MOBAs trying to get my starcraft fix, but I can't find an equivalent in that or mobile RTS realm.
- kissickas 10y agoI'm more disappointed that there won't be an official Linux release. The 1998 version works fine with WINE so I can still hope that they don't break anything with the remake.
- jimparkins 10y agoStarcraft Remastered - Check Warcraft III Remastered - ?
- ycombinete 10y agoSomeone did a pretty good job of this, in Starcraft 2, a while back
- cknight 10y agoGiven the job descriptions which Blizzard had out for a while before this release, I think it's Diablo 1 & 2 which are more likely to find themselves remastered next.
- duiker101 10y agoWith the Diablo 3 "Retro expansion" I wouldn't really think they are going to do a remastered version too.
- cknight 10y agoAh, yeah I forgot about that. It doesn't make a Diablo 2 remastering any less likely though, IMO, as opposed to a Diablo one. This is what I remember seeing: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-looking-to-revive-these-classic-games-upd/1100-6431991/ https://www.gamespot.com/articles/blizzard-looking-to-revive...
- jakebasile 10y agoDiablo 1/2 remastered would be a treat.
- ufo 10y agoI have heard rumors that path 1.28 is coming out soon with some quality-of-life updates.
- nickpeterson 10y agoI have a daughter who will be close to 6 when this is released, and I fully intend to force her to learn to play this because her dad is a nerd.
- vlunkr 10y agoFew game developers make with as much longevity as blizzard. Wow has been running for over a decade. And people are still playing this game competitively. It's not like they remaking for nostalgia, they're remaking for people who haven't stopped playing! (And nostalgia)
- macspoofing 10y agoIt's about time. I was wondering why it took them this long to give the game a high-res face-lift.
- amix 10y agoAs a warmup I strongly suggest following the ASL, where many of the StarCraft legends are still competing (e.g. Flash, Bisu). There's a team event now: http://sc2casts.com/event913-2017-ASL-Team-Battle-S1 http://sc2casts.com/event913-2017-ASL-Team-Battle-S1 The remastering will probably give a major rebirth to this epic game. So excited!
- kregasaurusrex 10y agoI'm hoping this attracts more attention to building Starcraft AIs to solve games. (http://www.starcraftai.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.starcraftai.com/wiki/Main_Page as a springboard) It's a unique problem with respect to not having a fixed number of unique game states; which grow exponentially over time. From anecdotal experience in watching technologies evolve in my lifetime, some of the greatest leaps in computing research (hw+sw) have been covariated with solving algorithmic problems, with the latest being the use of neural nets to beat the very best humans at Go. Excited to see if an official API would be written to allow greater programmatic control for hobbyists!
- zouhair 10y agoAnd those AIs must use mouse, keyboard and screen like everyone else.
- feefie 10y agoFor those interested, here's how to get a simple bot running in 30 minutes or less. Click the Twitch link to see the end goal and see how good/not-so-good various bots are today. Watch StarCraft Broodwar bots live on Twitch now (runs 24x7 showing newly uploaded bots, commentary on Sunday afternoons): https://www.twitch.tv/sscait https://www.twitch.tv/sscait Follow these easy steps to code, run locally, then upload your own bot: http://sscaitournament.com/index.php?action=tutorial http://sscaitournament.com/index.php?action=tutorial Also of interest, the Deepmind/Blizzard announcement concerning plans for StarCraft II: https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-release-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment/ https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-release-star...
- nurettin 10y agoI dabbled with SC bots back in late 90's and early 2000's. The game isn't very open-ended. The "board", so-to-speak, is constrained by trade-offs such as resource gathering, "unit tiers", "unit counters", "current meta" and map designs that reduce the number of things you can do at any given minute. So much so that I think the 300-400 APM we see consistently being pumped out by the top players isn't the human limit, it's the actual game limit. In which case I would consider the game solved.
- overcast 10y agoI've been waiting for a proper remaster of Starcraft forever! I didn't want to jump into the story at SC2. So excited for this.
- AlexAMEEE 10y agoI didn't play any games in the past 7-8 years ( besides chess ) but this is huge, B+ I'm coming. Is Iccup alive ?
- Altay- 10y agoBlizzard has stated that StarCraft Remastered will incluve native support for FISH -- which is apparently a Korean server with ranked match making. This presumably means ranked matchmaking is to be expected for Western players as well. Whether that included iccup or not, I don't know.
- Altay- 10y agoBlizzard has stated that StarCraft Remastered will incluve native support for FISH -- which is apparently a Korean server with ranked match making. This presumably means ranked matchmaking is to be expected for Western players as well. Whether that included iccup or not, I don't know.
- xg15 10y ago> The gameplay balance and idiosyncrasies have been painstakingly preserved from the original game. Mutalisk stacking, magic-boxing, unit pathfinding, control-group limitations, and more will all remain intact, allowing veteran players to enjoy playing and watching high-level competitive matches as before. I get that esports are serious business by now, but are we really at a point where we have to stay bug-compatible with old releases?
- jabgrabdthrow 10y agoMany of the top competitive games are good by accident, brood war is a classic example. Yes, it should stay bug-compatible, otherwise they can call it starcraft 3.
- dragontamer 10y agoYou do realize that Street Fighter 2 "super canceling" was a bug, which has been painfully recreated in virtually every future 2d Fighting Game, right? Within a gaming community, bugs can often become features. Mutalisk Stacking is an important strategy for Zerg players, and requires the Magic Box to work. So... yeah. Unless you want to completely screw high-level Zerg players over... you have to recreate Mutalisk Stacking and Magic Boxing. Its part of the balance of high-level play.
- nathanaldensr 10y agoYou do if you want to bring original StarCraft players back into the fold. Muscle memory is a huge part of the game.
- greenhatman 10y agoSome bugs, like animation cancelling, turned out to make the games why more technical and challenging. It would dumb the game down to take it out. It's not a bug anymore, it's a feature.
- 3131s 10y agoWhat's an example of animation cancelling in Starcraft? Thanks for introducing me to a new concept! Any more bugs / features like this?
- benologist 10y agoBest new feature will definitely be the always-online DRM!!!
- erikb 10y agoDid they take it from the front page? Why?
- 3131s 10y agoWeird, it's gone for me as well.
- phasnox 10y agoAnyone knows if you are going to be able to select more than 12 units? And if auto spawn to minerals when workers pop up?
- heyheyhey 10y agoGameplay is exactly like SC1 so no to both those questions.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- phasnox 10y agoAnyone knows if you are going to be able to select more than 12 units? And if auto spawn to minerals when workers pop up?