12 ms·

StarCraft Remastered

360 points by alxmdev 10y ago

rublev 10y ago
Ridiculously excited. Nothing in my life was better than BW+1.6. Rotated those games religiously and went pro, wasted about 5 years of my life but damn it was the most fun 5. Love that new life is being breathed into such a mechanically (but graphically lacking) engaging game.
- oxide 10y ago
  I used to play an MMO called The Realm Online from ~2003-2007. It had a player-run economy, so I offered millions of the in-game currency for someone's Starcraft CD key, as all I had was a burnt CD. I was itching to play online with a friend of mine. Eventually I got that key and enjoyed many, many hours of online play with a good friend. I never did get to play the expansion, although I'm well aware it's considered the definitive experience. Counter-Strike is similarly something else I had to miss out on, I just didn't have a way to purchase games digitally. Steam was around as well as services like Direct2Drive but my Mom didn't have a bank account, so I just accepted that I'd be missing out on these multiplayer experiences as a teenager. I did manage to keep up my subscription to The Realm for a long time, but that was thanks to the wonderful concept of money in birthday cards. Once WoW launched it basically killed The Realm anyway, I could have spent that money more wisely in retrospect. Starcraft was a rare multiplayer exception for me, along with Jedi Academy, and UT. It'll always have a place in my heart because of that. Later in life, I ended up putting over 800 hours into CS:GO and now own over 300 games on Steam, so I lived my multiplayer dreams eventually. I've shelled out enough for Hearthstone packs by now that I don't feel guilty about trading that now worthless huge chunk of The Realm Online gold for that valuable Starcraft CD key.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    Wow, that's the first time I've heard anyone talk about The Realm in a long time. I played it from its release in 1996 until EverQuest came out in 1999. How did you end up getting into The Realm in 2003, long after its prime?
    - speeder 10y ago
      I never played it myself, but I last I checked the game is still running just fine! (as in, there are official servers to pay subscription and play the game).
      - Drithe 10y ago
        Account Creation: http://185.142.236.230/account/ http://185.142.236.230/account/ Client Download: https://anonfile.com/33Hcx8bfbc/Client_-_3.172.zip https://anonfile.com/33Hcx8bfbc/Client_-_3.172.zip (run sciw.exe in windows xp compatibility mode if it doesn't work or admin mode) There happens to be a fresh private server with 100+ players during primetime!
        oxide 10y ago
        Wow, this is a long time dream come true. The last private server was lost long ago to the sands of time.
        oxide 10y ago
        Thank you so much for this. I never would have heard of it otherwise. All my old friends are here already as well, this was honestly awesome to find when I got up this morning.
    - oxide 10y ago
      A good friend of mine played the game, I'd often be over at his house playing it with him or simply watching him play. The novelty was phenomenal to me at the tender age of 12. Here was a chat room, and a game, all rolled into one. I'd never seen anything like it. I wanted my own account. It would be a few years until that happened. When I was 15 I started with an annual subscription for 49.99, playing on my mother's computer at first after assuring her it wasn't a virus. This was before the launch of DAoC, so maybe early 03? The game still had a relatively active population (500-750 players near peak hours, something I would scoff at today and declare dead. relative!) After the launch of WoW in '04 the regulars became less regular and eventually the population was under 200, then 100, etc. It had 25 players online last time I got nostalgic and installed it to hear the startup tune. Anyway, I had a great time with The Realm Online. I loved it. I made friends and liked talking to them. So I stuck around and watched it slowly wither away, at least until 2007-8 or so. It was clear that the "developers" who purchased the rights to the game had no interest in developing the game any further. I still think The Realm Online would do fine in the F2P space, stuffed full of microtransactions. The turn based combat would be perfect for a touchscreen. Apparently it's coded in a dead language invented by Sierra, so I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice to see a private server, at least. Over the years I made many friends, some of whom I still regularly play games with. I imagine many folks had a similar experience with their first MMORPG, whenever I see people talk about Runescape or WoW, I always think of The Realm and my time with it.
  - ido 10y ago
    OT but how did your mum not have a bank account? Was this common where you're from? I can't imagine it working anywhere i've lived (for one you won't be able to get paid).
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ferentchak 10y ago
      As a poor American you will run into many people that don't have a bank account. Lots of things can hurt your credit here and once your credit is wrecked it can be challenging to have even a savings account. There is an entire industry here to serve (many would say take advantage of) people in this situation. Many shops will cash payroll and government checks for you since otherwise you would not be able to. Usually from what I have seen they charge somewhere around a dollar per hundred dollars on the check.
- jacobolus 10y ago
  I occasionally watched professional Korean Starcraft games for a few years. The graphics of Broodwar are so much better for the audience’s sake (and I assume also for the players’) than Starcraft 2 or similar 3D games. Having pixel sprites and a fixed isometric view is a huge advantage in character legibility/contrast. 3D everything demos well and looks more “realistic” (i.e. more like a high-budget space film), but it’s horrible when you’re trying to see past the clutter to figure out what’s going on. All the rotating cameras and fancy animated backgrounds and tricky lighting and so on are pure gimmicks which distract from the gameplay.
  - gribbly 10y ago
    Exactly, for top down rts games, 3d offers nothing but increased hardware demands. It's not as if you have anything to gain by zooming in on a unit or rotate around it, pre-rendered graphics will look better and have less hardware demands.
    - debaserab2 10y ago
      The main problem with 2d sprites is animation. 2d sprites will never compare to 3d animation in terms of what an object can visually communicate to a player about what is happening in a game. In full 3d, animation can tell a player a lot about what is happening on the battle field, such as where the bounding boxes actually are near a unit, what the actual angle is they are using to target a unit, or how a unit is physically affected by different buffs/debuffs. Although I find well made 2d games to be remarkable for their own reasons, I don't there is a legitimate argument as to which provides the superior gameplay.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        For me 2D graphics do look better (especially SC1 vs. SC2) because of the art style. When you go from hand-drawn sprites to 3D models, you always lose quality, because there's more computation to be done than any hardware could reasonably perform in real-time. Some games try to hide it by altering their art style, e.g. by making more cartoony-looking units. Warcraft 3 did that, and SC2 seems to have inherited it. Which for me was huge negative - the general atmosphere of SC1 was dark and serious; SC2 feels lightweight and more like a comedy at times.
- tomashertus 10y ago
  Went pro? Where did you play? I was semi-pro Age of X player from 2002 - 2008, Never had chance to switch pro, since AoEII/III(M) were not so hyped and there were little money comparing to W3, SC:BW and Quake3. Still one of the best memories in my life.
- lillesvin 10y ago
  > wasted about 5 years of my life [...] it was the most fun 5. Sounds like they weren't really wasted after all. :)
  - rublev 10y ago
    If I had fun for 100 years it would be a waste of time because after a certain amount of 'fun' your consumption turns into a net negative and becomes over consumption.
- Humdeee 10y ago
  What was your screen name? I was on team canada for a few years and largely involved in the scene so I'd definitely recognize it if it was around the early to mid 2000's. What team?
- fuckthis 10y ago
  The real reason it's coming back, is because some places SC1 is more popular than WOL. Play the two and you'll see the difference.
melling 10y ago
earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409
- 3131s 10y ago
  For some reason this thread disappeared suddenly despite having many upvotes and quality comments. What happened mods?
  - dang 10y ago
    That's an announcement of an announcement. Those are off topic.
Waterluvian 10y ago
Widescreen? Do I get to zoom out in multiplayer? I'm very curious to see just how much they feel okay changing game-altering systems or behaviours. Ie. Even widescreen alters how the game will get played to some extent. I think the hard part is knowing where to draw the line in order to keep it "authentic"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- leggomylibro 10y ago
  I wonder how many units you'll be able to select.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    12.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  Does it matter? If competitions want to keep to a specific format, they won't use this version? Or the competiton will change, brining more excitement?
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Blizzard can shut down any televised tournament that doesn't have authorization from them. So they could theoretically force league's hands and move them off original SCBW, like how they've pressured Kespa in the past.
- tenpies 10y ago
  > how much they feel okay changing game-altering systems or behaviours. Apparently they made sure to keep a lot of what we would probably consider bugs. Goliaths and Dragoons still have "derpy" [they used this word] pathing and Reaver Scarabs will sometimes not connect or bug out. The HD client will actually be able to play current version replays so it seems like they managed to stick to graphics and UI changes almost exclusively.
jdubs 10y ago
Not sure why a carrier is shooting a blue beam at some planet, but what ever.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  It's a remastered carrier.
- atune 10y ago
  I am pretty sure the Protoss tried to curb the Zerg advancement by planetary exterminatus. It was at least mentioned in briefings, if not even shown in a cutscene.
  - EamonnMR 10y ago
    I wonder if we'll get cutscenes to replace the explanatory text screens and briefings.
    - duskwuff 10y ago
      I'd be happy enough with remastered versions of the original cutscenes. 640x480 Smacker video looked decent in 1998, but it doesn't hold up today.
richdougherty 10y ago
Sorta related… a fun podcast interview with someone who's been involved in the Age of Empires II modding community and is now helping release official expansions. Some anecdotes about the performance impact of changing from assembly-coded 2D sprites to 3D graphics. http://hanselminutes.com/568/forgotten-empires-amazing-games-age-of-empires-is-back-with-bert-beeckman http://hanselminutes.com/568/forgotten-empires-amazing-games... I played a lot of AoE II and StarCraft back in the day.
- jonbaer 10y ago
  I still don't think I understand the appeal to closed source games vs. completely open, 0AD (https://play0ad.com https://play0ad.com) still strikes me as the most complete open RTS out there but I am wondering if people are more adapt to a smaller closed game vs. large open game just due to the faster adaption and release rates. Is there anyone else who thinks the AI-based APIs of these games are driving these updates or (for example) the machine learning challenges in RTS balancing, etc.
  - SXX 10y ago
    When someone doing a research using popular closed source game half of game related press publish some news about that research full of buzzwords. And company that own copyright on it could even dedicate few engineers to help because why not - it's cheap PR. Same exact research for open source game would likely only bring attention of actual developers and ML crowd. Oh, on top of that many would expect to see your data and source code.
  - louhike 10y ago
    0ad is fun but it lacks a lot of polish for the UI and has performance problems (even though, it is getting resolved). A lot of new content is added but there are problems of balance. I wish they will stop to add new civilizations and concentrate and making a release version.
blackguardx 10y ago
I was going to say that they should offer a discount if you own the original version, but then I remembered I bought the game almost 20 years ago and probably have no proof of purchase.
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  I actually think I may have some kind of proof of purchase since I linked the game to the battle.net account at some point. But I can't imagine the cost being too outrageous in any case.
- 1123581321 10y ago
  It is common among people who still play bw to have bought 2-4 copies of the game over ~15 years as discs and keys get lost. What's one more copy at this point? :) I hope it will at least have tie-in content for other Blizzard games, though.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  Fun fact: the expansion didn't even have its own CD key.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  They're releasing the original (sans graphics improvements) as completely free soon.
  - joshstrange 10y ago
    Do you have a link for this and do you know if it will work on newer macs? I hate playing SC in a wineskin.
    - TulliusCicero 10y ago
      Initially they've said it won't work on macs, but it sounds like it's coming soon. Here are the details for the upcoming patch: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/520460-starcraft-v118a-patch-notes-preparation-for-scr http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/520460-starcraft-v...
orionblastar 10y ago
I think there was a foss project to remake. https://github.com/Wargus/Stratagus https://github.com/Wargus/Stratagus I think it needed Starcraft data files to work. I got an old CD from 1998 but never tried it. I heard it is cross platform.
- gribbly 10y ago
  There was this javascript/html5 re-implementation as well, also needed the original Starcraft data files: https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js
- DavidNielsen 10y ago
  There's also a somewhat incomplete reimplementation in C# https://github.com/toshok/scsharp https://github.com/toshok/scsharp
cwyers 10y ago
There may only be so much they could do and maintain compatibility with the old game, but I don't think the remastered graphics look that great. A clear step up from the original on modern screens, but not that great.
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Think of how the original looks with bilinear upscaling on a HiDPI display.
  - cwyers 10y ago
    Um... could you maybe show a screenshot and save me the trouble of having to think through that? I was just looking at their "before and after" slider visualizations.
- gruez 10y ago
  How could they make the new graphics look "great" without changing the aesthetics?
  - DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
    They're higher-resolution and a better colour-depth, but it's a bit jarring how they're all identical... at first-glance the game's overall visuals feel like a low-production-value freemium web-game. If they did things like apply random aesthetic changes (like dirt, grime, slightly different greebling) to structures of the same class then I think that would make the game look better - some games did that, for example CNC Generals had different models for the GLA Technical vehicle, and non-functional animation speeds for infantry units were randomised too.
    - hkmurakami 10y ago
      Does SC2 even do this? It might just not be within their design aesthetic.
    - plorkyeran 10y ago
jshmrsn 10y ago
I had to double-check that it wasn't April 1st already. This is really cool and I personally didn't think something like this would happen (I was worried Blizzard would consider it an admission of defeat for SC2's competetive play).
notaplumber 10y ago
Anyone able to scan the qr code on the terran face? My phone can't pick it up.
- bobbles 10y ago
  It just leads to the starcraft website
trothamel 10y ago
Is that QR code on the Terran's forehead the introduction to an ARG? I don't have time to decode it at the moment, so I'm wondering if anyone else has.
- reportingsjr 10y ago
  It is a QR code! I just scanned it and it had a url.. http://starcraft.com http://starcraft.com.
  - richdougherty 10y ago
    :( I'd hoped that by the time we're flying around the galaxy in spaceships we would have moved from HTTP to HTTPS.
    - Sunset 10y ago
      Goliaths are derpy as fuck because they are running on node.js
chj 10y ago
Hope it won't take years.
intruder 10y ago
This must feel a bit like a blow to the shieldbattery developers. I hope the community will continue using it despite this announcement.
keithwhor 10y ago
'Member StarCraft? 'Member the Matrix? I 'member. (This game was a huge part of my childhood. Love it.)
pfarnsworth 10y ago
I remember the competition between Starcraft vs Total Annihilation. I was very much into TA at the time, which was a beautifully crafted game. I could play against my friend across the country on 33.6kbps modem with 500 units each without crashing. Sure, each frame would take a second or so, but we would set up our attacks and just sit there and watch without worrying it would crash, it was amazing. Obviously Starcraft ended up winning, but boy was TA an amazing game.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  I've heard that TA had really great and fun mods. Any anecdotes of that you might be familiar with?
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    StarCraft had a much more fully featured custom map editor. I'd say that StarCraft had way better mods. It was the base game in TA that I really loved. I played that for my RTS fix, and I played Use Map Settings games in StarCraft for everything else. I never really played the base StarCraft game in multiplayer; TA was more fun.
  - pfarnsworth 10y ago
    There was a very dedicated community around modding TA. I remember a Star Wars mod, but I never ended up playing the mods.
- pzaich 10y ago
  Total Annihilation was great. The big difference for me that made Starcraft superior was the uniquely balanced set of races to choose from. The two factions in TA were essentially mirror images of each other. Starcraft always felt like it had another layer of depth to strategy as a result of the various matchups between races.
  - Nition 10y ago
    Totally agree that the different balanced factions made Starcraft superior BUT, the beautifully designed interface made TA superior in another way. Coming from clunky predecessors like Red Alert, the removal of micromanagement in TA was a revelation. You could queue multiple units to build, adding in multiples of 1 or 5 (Supreme Commander later made this into an even more powerful system). You could queue an infinite amount of orders for each of your units - not just pathing waypoints but everything. I used to set my Commander up to do about 15 minutes of building at the start of the game. You could tell buildings to "move" somewhere and all units coming out of those buildings would go there when built. You could tell construction units to patrol and they'd automatically repair damaged units and collect resources on the way. You could tell construction units to assist buildings and they'd help build new units. You could press Ctrl-A to select all units, Ctrl-W to select all fighting units, and other ones for airplanes, ships etc. And so on. I think it pretty much shaped the attitude I have today where in game design, I think everything that has one "correct" answer should be automated away, and everything else made as simple as possible. Of course when TA first came out the battle wasn't yet between TA and Starcraft, but between TA and Dark Reign.
shiado 10y ago
For the uninitiated, StarCraft Brood War is perhaps the most mechanically demanding game there is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRIxq_cJDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRIxq_cJDE
- nas 10y ago
  I watched a lot of pro broodwar back in the day. Their mechanic ability is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q
  - mpeg 10y ago
    To be fair, most of the crazy fast typing is repetition of a few commands so they get used to cycling through them fast. It's all about training yourself so you can transition from macro to micro play more easily.
- rhaps0dy 10y ago
  Is it more demanding than Starcraft 2 or Starcraft without expansions? Why?
  - dkns 10y ago
    In SC2 you have multi building selection and you can select and group as many unit as you want under one hotkey. In SC:BW you can only select and hotkey one building and unit groups are limited to 12 units. So you can have e.g. 36 units bind to keys 1-3 and 7 buildings bind to keys 4-0. Population cap in game is 200 and depending on game quite a lot of that cap will go to workers which you don't have to manage. That still leaves you with easily around 100 population or more of units that you have to micromanage. When you understand this watching somebody like Jaedong play zerg you'll understand how insane it is. He'll usually have hatcheries (buildings that build almost every zerg unit in the game) bind to 0-9 keys and then he'll manage and micro huge swarms of zerg units. Zerg are the quantity race in the game, you'll often have a ton of cheap units (e.g. zerglings or hydralisks) supplemented by few bigger units (ultralisks) and you have to manage them all (usually without keybinds), keep producing units, cast spells (using defilers) and do that all at around 400 apm (action per minutes) facing against another dude who is doing the same.
cik2e 10y ago
I've played countless hours of this game on 56k when I was a kid. Needless to say, I was ridiculously excited after hearing about this. But seeing the before and after footage in the video on StarCraft.com has left me pretty disappointed. The maps nearly look identical and that's where I hoped the biggest improvement would lie. A little more detail than the original in the environments would go a long way towards me wanting to shell out some cash. What I've seen looks like a new skin on the old engine and literally nothing else in terms of aesthetics.
- wingerlang 10y ago
  I think seeing it in person might change it as it supports wide screen and 4K resolution. I barely saw the difference when they showed the difference in the video.
- 9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
  What did you expect? I think it's a tough line to talk — update the graphics, but don't change things so much that people don't recognize them. I have done zero research, but I can't imagine they won't introduce some new tilesets and maps.
ericzawo 10y ago
Boy am I optimistic for this game. I fondly remember UMS Sunken Defense, tower defense originators and of course Big Game Hunters maps. I'm really hoping a robust map editor is included. Mac friendly would be nice too, especially considering Overwatch(?!) is Windows only.
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  Overwatch is windows only because apple has given up on gaming on OSX, further evidence: they dont have OpenGL 4.x (which has existed for 7 years now), Vulcan, or drivers for the nvidia 1xxx series of cards.
  - lloeki 10y ago
    Overwatch runs fine on either Bootcamp (so the hardware is capable enough) or in Parallels (which can't access the GPU directly, hence goes through some translation layer that end up as regular OpenGL calls, so the OS X OpenGL stack is capable enough, let alone Metal). Blizzard is just being cheap here. > they dont have OpenGL 4.x Nitpick: 4.1 is fully supported on my mid '14 Intel GPU. You sounded like OS X is locked at 3.3
niftich 10y ago
Amazing news! Though I didn't play it competitively, StarCraft was a big part of my life -- my friends and I made custom scenarios to be played in 'Use Map Settings' mode, like dozens of iterations of tower defense and the like. Given the impressive list of tune-ups, I'm hoping that some improvements will be made to mapmaking -- or perchance, even "modding", which was never really supported aside from third-party hacks. On the low end, support for mp3, Vorbis, or some other compressed audio format for custom sounds would be nice instead of .wav, but if they aimed higher they could rejuvenate a player-generated content community for years to come.
- Tossrock 10y ago
  The Starcraft 2 modding is incredibly in-depth* and that scene is slowly dying. * I am pretty sure that Blizzard actually made an entire other game, Heroes of the Storm, using those same tools
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    HoTS uses a different engine and completely new netcode to SC2.
    - ferdbold 10y ago
      It does use the same engine as StarCraft II. It originally started as Blizzard All-Stars and was supposed to be a custom map for the SC2 arcade, but the team ran into technical roadblocks that pushed them into making HotS a separate game.
      - fuckthis 10y ago
        >the team ran into technical roadblocks The "technical roadblocks" were no easy way to monetize it as a map.
      - NTripleOne 10y ago
        Just to take you back even further, it originally started as "Blizzard DOTA".
mmgutz 10y ago
When? I want to buy NOW!
tomc1985 10y ago
Total Annihilation was waaay better! :)
- Synaesthesia 10y ago
  Eh different philosophies. I also loved TA though.
- nercht12 10y ago
  That got revised and rewritten as the FOSS game ZeroK [1]. The original is still under copyright, but the guys who did ZeroK started with it as the code base and then gradually removed all the proprietary code. Surprisingly for a FOSS game project as big as it is, it's still actively developed. [1] http://zero-k.info/ http://zero-k.info/
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    There's TA:Spring project too
- niuzeta 10y ago
  My pick was Dark Reign. Boy was it ahead of its time. :(
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  It's impossible to say, TA never took off and so never had a large competitive scene like SC/BW had, and so you can't really evaluate its balance. And the balance is probably the most legendary thing about Starcraft 1, that it was so well-balanced even though each faction was radically different.
  - tomc1985 10y ago
    I always felt like SC was too balanced. TA at LAN parties was more fun because most people weren't so practiced at it (To be fair, Blizzard is excellent at doing balance. So good in fact that it also took a lot of the fun out of WoW; four hours of grinding for a +2% stat increase...)
jimyl 10y ago
Will the remastered version attract some new gamers? It would be great if people are interested in RTS again. Now seems that everyone is playing MOBA.
- niuzeta 10y ago
  I doubt it but I imagine the Battle.net servers bursting on day 1 to 10 of the release, as so many people who grew up with this game would give it a play.
edoceo 10y ago
Remember the HTML5 version? Too bad they shut that down. Would have preferred a paid/hosted version rather than their DMCA action. Missed an opportunity there folks.
- wapz 10y ago
  I never saw an HTML5 version of SC. I stopped playing long ago though by the time WoW came out.
  - desdiv 10y ago
    http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js
cykr0n 10y ago
3v3 ZC No Rules Xperts See you soon...
lebanon_tn 10y ago
"Revised dialogue and audio" makes me nervous. Hopefully they don't mess with perfection, could ruin an otherwise awesome sounding project.
imjustsaying 10y ago
Never got into Starcraft, Warcraft II on the other hand
- wapz 10y ago
  I played SC, SC2, and WC3 fairly competitively (top 100 or so in each of those games). I tried WC2 multiplayer once and I swear grunts were in my base within ~60 seconds of the game starting. I'm sure I would have figured it out if I continued but it felt faster than a 4 pool.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    WC2 is actually an incredibly slow game. Like even BW is slow compared to SC2 (especially these days) but try going back to WC2 now and it'll feel downright glacial.
- jkarneges 10y ago
  Those were the days. I think I preferred WC2 because of how precise the play was.
justicezyx 10y ago
Many acclaim this. I am dismayed. Remastering Starcraft should be done almost 10 years ago. While swimming in the money pool of WoW, Blz lost their entire charm of relentless demand on quality, innovation, and dedication. They forcefully killed Starcraft with StarcraftII. They abandoned WarcraftIII, one of most popular game (among all genres) at its time. Warcraft III gets less balance patch then Starcraft, the game they intended to kill. They remastered DiabloII, rebranded it DiabloIII. They released a great Moba game, called overwatch. After almost 10 years they witnessed WarcraftIII's demise and raise of the original Dota. Now, they started reaping profit from their most loyal fans, with a remastered Starcraft. The very game that they tried to kill. I think, to me, this is a milestone of Blz's own demise. Farewell Blz, you truly redefined yourself as a mediocre game developer.
cocochanel 10y ago
I want a Warcraft III Remastered!
- elcapitan 10y ago
  And Warcraft II remastered!
Synaesthesia 10y ago
The following may be of interest to HN types; the Student Starcraft AI Tournament. http://sscaitournament.com http://sscaitournament.com
laowushi 10y ago
Exciting!
terrywang 10y ago
As a huge fan of Starcraft and its expansion Brood War, I am really excited. I bought StarCraft 2 after it was released but I simply didn't like it, maybe I grew older and life was busy then. However, I think it's more about the focus was shifted, when adding fancy graphics effects, the RTS elements are gone, plus added complexity. I think the remastered version will re-ignite the faded friendship between a group of guys/gals. The original game used to be our bond. However, the bond is fading over the years as I moved overseas, most folks have their own family/people/things to care about. The best thing is: "Most importantly, the strategy gameplay that StarCraft perfected years ago remains unchanged." Nuclear launch detected ;-)
jlebrech 10y ago
how much is it?
akirayamaoka 10y ago
Blur. Blur is everywhere.
gspetr 10y ago
Exciting news, but this just rubbed me the wrong way: > Do you have fond memories of LAN parties and dial-up connections, or have you heard stories of the good old days? Very arrogant, coming from the company that killed the LAN parties by forcing always-online-DRM.
nloa 10y ago
http://www.openra.net http://www.openra.net Is a remastered Red Alert (Command and Conquer) which as well is really fun to play.

360 points by alxmdev 10y ago

Ridiculously excited. Nothing in my life was better than BW+1.6. Rotated those games religiously and went pro, wasted about 5 years of my life but damn it was the most fun 5. Love that new life is being breathed into such a mechanically (but graphically lacking) engaging game.

oxide 10y ago
I used to play an MMO called The Realm Online from ~2003-2007. It had a player-run economy, so I offered millions of the in-game currency for someone's Starcraft CD key, as all I had was a burnt CD. I was itching to play online with a friend of mine. Eventually I got that key and enjoyed many, many hours of online play with a good friend. I never did get to play the expansion, although I'm well aware it's considered the definitive experience. Counter-Strike is similarly something else I had to miss out on, I just didn't have a way to purchase games digitally. Steam was around as well as services like Direct2Drive but my Mom didn't have a bank account, so I just accepted that I'd be missing out on these multiplayer experiences as a teenager. I did manage to keep up my subscription to The Realm for a long time, but that was thanks to the wonderful concept of money in birthday cards. Once WoW launched it basically killed The Realm anyway, I could have spent that money more wisely in retrospect. Starcraft was a rare multiplayer exception for me, along with Jedi Academy, and UT. It'll always have a place in my heart because of that. Later in life, I ended up putting over 800 hours into CS:GO and now own over 300 games on Steam, so I lived my multiplayer dreams eventually. I've shelled out enough for Hearthstone packs by now that I don't feel guilty about trading that now worthless huge chunk of The Realm Online gold for that valuable Starcraft CD key.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Wow, that's the first time I've heard anyone talk about The Realm in a long time. I played it from its release in 1996 until EverQuest came out in 1999. How did you end up getting into The Realm in 2003, long after its prime?
  - speeder 10y ago
    I never played it myself, but I last I checked the game is still running just fine! (as in, there are official servers to pay subscription and play the game).
    - Drithe 10y ago
      Account Creation: http://185.142.236.230/account/ http://185.142.236.230/account/ Client Download: https://anonfile.com/33Hcx8bfbc/Client_-_3.172.zip https://anonfile.com/33Hcx8bfbc/Client_-_3.172.zip (run sciw.exe in windows xp compatibility mode if it doesn't work or admin mode) There happens to be a fresh private server with 100+ players during primetime!
      - oxide 10y ago
        Wow, this is a long time dream come true. The last private server was lost long ago to the sands of time.
      - oxide 10y ago
        Thank you so much for this. I never would have heard of it otherwise. All my old friends are here already as well, this was honestly awesome to find when I got up this morning.
  - oxide 10y ago
    A good friend of mine played the game, I'd often be over at his house playing it with him or simply watching him play. The novelty was phenomenal to me at the tender age of 12. Here was a chat room, and a game, all rolled into one. I'd never seen anything like it. I wanted my own account. It would be a few years until that happened. When I was 15 I started with an annual subscription for 49.99, playing on my mother's computer at first after assuring her it wasn't a virus. This was before the launch of DAoC, so maybe early 03? The game still had a relatively active population (500-750 players near peak hours, something I would scoff at today and declare dead. relative!) After the launch of WoW in '04 the regulars became less regular and eventually the population was under 200, then 100, etc. It had 25 players online last time I got nostalgic and installed it to hear the startup tune. Anyway, I had a great time with The Realm Online. I loved it. I made friends and liked talking to them. So I stuck around and watched it slowly wither away, at least until 2007-8 or so. It was clear that the "developers" who purchased the rights to the game had no interest in developing the game any further. I still think The Realm Online would do fine in the F2P space, stuffed full of microtransactions. The turn based combat would be perfect for a touchscreen. Apparently it's coded in a dead language invented by Sierra, so I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice to see a private server, at least. Over the years I made many friends, some of whom I still regularly play games with. I imagine many folks had a similar experience with their first MMORPG, whenever I see people talk about Runescape or WoW, I always think of The Realm and my time with it.
- ido 10y ago
  OT but how did your mum not have a bank account? Was this common where you're from? I can't imagine it working anywhere i've lived (for one you won't be able to get paid).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ferentchak 10y ago
    As a poor American you will run into many people that don't have a bank account. Lots of things can hurt your credit here and once your credit is wrecked it can be challenging to have even a savings account. There is an entire industry here to serve (many would say take advantage of) people in this situation. Many shops will cash payroll and government checks for you since otherwise you would not be able to. Usually from what I have seen they charge somewhere around a dollar per hundred dollars on the check.
jacobolus 10y ago
I occasionally watched professional Korean Starcraft games for a few years. The graphics of Broodwar are so much better for the audience’s sake (and I assume also for the players’) than Starcraft 2 or similar 3D games. Having pixel sprites and a fixed isometric view is a huge advantage in character legibility/contrast. 3D everything demos well and looks more “realistic” (i.e. more like a high-budget space film), but it’s horrible when you’re trying to see past the clutter to figure out what’s going on. All the rotating cameras and fancy animated backgrounds and tricky lighting and so on are pure gimmicks which distract from the gameplay.
- gribbly 10y ago
  Exactly, for top down rts games, 3d offers nothing but increased hardware demands. It's not as if you have anything to gain by zooming in on a unit or rotate around it, pre-rendered graphics will look better and have less hardware demands.
  - debaserab2 10y ago
    The main problem with 2d sprites is animation. 2d sprites will never compare to 3d animation in terms of what an object can visually communicate to a player about what is happening in a game. In full 3d, animation can tell a player a lot about what is happening on the battle field, such as where the bounding boxes actually are near a unit, what the actual angle is they are using to target a unit, or how a unit is physically affected by different buffs/debuffs. Although I find well made 2d games to be remarkable for their own reasons, I don't there is a legitimate argument as to which provides the superior gameplay.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      For me 2D graphics do look better (especially SC1 vs. SC2) because of the art style. When you go from hand-drawn sprites to 3D models, you always lose quality, because there's more computation to be done than any hardware could reasonably perform in real-time. Some games try to hide it by altering their art style, e.g. by making more cartoony-looking units. Warcraft 3 did that, and SC2 seems to have inherited it. Which for me was huge negative - the general atmosphere of SC1 was dark and serious; SC2 feels lightweight and more like a comedy at times.
tomashertus 10y ago
Went pro? Where did you play? I was semi-pro Age of X player from 2002 - 2008, Never had chance to switch pro, since AoEII/III(M) were not so hyped and there were little money comparing to W3, SC:BW and Quake3. Still one of the best memories in my life.
lillesvin 10y ago
> wasted about 5 years of my life [...] it was the most fun 5. Sounds like they weren't really wasted after all. :)
- rublev 10y ago
  If I had fun for 100 years it would be a waste of time because after a certain amount of 'fun' your consumption turns into a net negative and becomes over consumption.
Humdeee 10y ago
What was your screen name? I was on team canada for a few years and largely involved in the scene so I'd definitely recognize it if it was around the early to mid 2000's. What team?
fuckthis 10y ago
The real reason it's coming back, is because some places SC1 is more popular than WOL. Play the two and you'll see the difference.

melling 10y ago

earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409

3131s 10y ago
For some reason this thread disappeared suddenly despite having many upvotes and quality comments. What happened mods?
- dang 10y ago
  That's an announcement of an announcement. Those are off topic.

Waterluvian 10y ago

Widescreen? Do I get to zoom out in multiplayer? I'm very curious to see just how much they feel okay changing game-altering systems or behaviours. Ie. Even widescreen alters how the game will get played to some extent. I think the hard part is knowing where to draw the line in order to keep it "authentic"

deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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leggomylibro 10y ago
I wonder how many units you'll be able to select.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  12.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Does it matter? If competitions want to keep to a specific format, they won't use this version? Or the competiton will change, brining more excitement?
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Blizzard can shut down any televised tournament that doesn't have authorization from them. So they could theoretically force league's hands and move them off original SCBW, like how they've pressured Kespa in the past.
tenpies 10y ago
> how much they feel okay changing game-altering systems or behaviours. Apparently they made sure to keep a lot of what we would probably consider bugs. Goliaths and Dragoons still have "derpy" [they used this word] pathing and Reaver Scarabs will sometimes not connect or bug out. The HD client will actually be able to play current version replays so it seems like they managed to stick to graphics and UI changes almost exclusively.

jdubs 10y ago

Not sure why a carrier is shooting a blue beam at some planet, but what ever.

enraged_camel 10y ago
It's a remastered carrier.
atune 10y ago
I am pretty sure the Protoss tried to curb the Zerg advancement by planetary exterminatus. It was at least mentioned in briefings, if not even shown in a cutscene.
- EamonnMR 10y ago
  I wonder if we'll get cutscenes to replace the explanatory text screens and briefings.
  - duskwuff 10y ago
    I'd be happy enough with remastered versions of the original cutscenes. 640x480 Smacker video looked decent in 1998, but it doesn't hold up today.

richdougherty 10y ago

Sorta related… a fun podcast interview with someone who's been involved in the Age of Empires II modding community and is now helping release official expansions. Some anecdotes about the performance impact of changing from assembly-coded 2D sprites to 3D graphics. http://hanselminutes.com/568/forgotten-empires-amazing-games-age-of-empires-is-back-with-bert-beeckman http://hanselminutes.com/568/forgotten-empires-amazing-games... I played a lot of AoE II and StarCraft back in the day.

jonbaer 10y ago
I still don't think I understand the appeal to closed source games vs. completely open, 0AD (https://play0ad.com https://play0ad.com) still strikes me as the most complete open RTS out there but I am wondering if people are more adapt to a smaller closed game vs. large open game just due to the faster adaption and release rates. Is there anyone else who thinks the AI-based APIs of these games are driving these updates or (for example) the machine learning challenges in RTS balancing, etc.
- SXX 10y ago
  When someone doing a research using popular closed source game half of game related press publish some news about that research full of buzzwords. And company that own copyright on it could even dedicate few engineers to help because why not - it's cheap PR. Same exact research for open source game would likely only bring attention of actual developers and ML crowd. Oh, on top of that many would expect to see your data and source code.
- louhike 10y ago
  0ad is fun but it lacks a lot of polish for the UI and has performance problems (even though, it is getting resolved). A lot of new content is added but there are problems of balance. I wish they will stop to add new civilizations and concentrate and making a release version.

blackguardx 10y ago

I was going to say that they should offer a discount if you own the original version, but then I remembered I bought the game almost 20 years ago and probably have no proof of purchase.

nikdaheratik 10y ago
I actually think I may have some kind of proof of purchase since I linked the game to the battle.net account at some point. But I can't imagine the cost being too outrageous in any case.
1123581321 10y ago
It is common among people who still play bw to have bought 2-4 copies of the game over ~15 years as discs and keys get lost. What's one more copy at this point? :) I hope it will at least have tie-in content for other Blizzard games, though.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Fun fact: the expansion didn't even have its own CD key.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
They're releasing the original (sans graphics improvements) as completely free soon.
- joshstrange 10y ago
  Do you have a link for this and do you know if it will work on newer macs? I hate playing SC in a wineskin.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    Initially they've said it won't work on macs, but it sounds like it's coming soon. Here are the details for the upcoming patch: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/520460-starcraft-v118a-patch-notes-preparation-for-scr http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-war/520460-starcraft-v...

orionblastar 10y ago

I think there was a foss project to remake. https://github.com/Wargus/Stratagus https://github.com/Wargus/Stratagus I think it needed Starcraft data files to work. I got an old CD from 1998 but never tried it. I heard it is cross platform.

gribbly 10y ago
There was this javascript/html5 re-implementation as well, also needed the original Starcraft data files: https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js
DavidNielsen 10y ago
There's also a somewhat incomplete reimplementation in C# https://github.com/toshok/scsharp https://github.com/toshok/scsharp

cwyers 10y ago

There may only be so much they could do and maintain compatibility with the old game, but I don't think the remastered graphics look that great. A clear step up from the original on modern screens, but not that great.

microcolonel 10y ago
Think of how the original looks with bilinear upscaling on a HiDPI display.
- cwyers 10y ago
  Um... could you maybe show a screenshot and save me the trouble of having to think through that? I was just looking at their "before and after" slider visualizations.
gruez 10y ago
How could they make the new graphics look "great" without changing the aesthetics?
- DaiPlusPlus 10y ago
  They're higher-resolution and a better colour-depth, but it's a bit jarring how they're all identical... at first-glance the game's overall visuals feel like a low-production-value freemium web-game. If they did things like apply random aesthetic changes (like dirt, grime, slightly different greebling) to structures of the same class then I think that would make the game look better - some games did that, for example CNC Generals had different models for the GLA Technical vehicle, and non-functional animation speeds for infantry units were randomised too.
  - hkmurakami 10y ago
    Does SC2 even do this? It might just not be within their design aesthetic.
  - plorkyeran 10y ago

jshmrsn 10y ago

I had to double-check that it wasn't April 1st already. This is really cool and I personally didn't think something like this would happen (I was worried Blizzard would consider it an admission of defeat for SC2's competetive play).

notaplumber 10y ago

Anyone able to scan the qr code on the terran face? My phone can't pick it up.

bobbles 10y ago
It just leads to the starcraft website

trothamel 10y ago

Is that QR code on the Terran's forehead the introduction to an ARG? I don't have time to decode it at the moment, so I'm wondering if anyone else has.

reportingsjr 10y ago
It is a QR code! I just scanned it and it had a url.. http://starcraft.com http://starcraft.com.
- richdougherty 10y ago
  :( I'd hoped that by the time we're flying around the galaxy in spaceships we would have moved from HTTP to HTTPS.
  - Sunset 10y ago
    Goliaths are derpy as fuck because they are running on node.js

chj 10y ago

Hope it won't take years.

intruder 10y ago

This must feel a bit like a blow to the shieldbattery developers. I hope the community will continue using it despite this announcement.

keithwhor 10y ago

'Member StarCraft? 'Member the Matrix? I 'member. (This game was a huge part of my childhood. Love it.)

pfarnsworth 10y ago

I remember the competition between Starcraft vs Total Annihilation. I was very much into TA at the time, which was a beautifully crafted game. I could play against my friend across the country on 33.6kbps modem with 500 units each without crashing. Sure, each frame would take a second or so, but we would set up our attacks and just sit there and watch without worrying it would crash, it was amazing. Obviously Starcraft ended up winning, but boy was TA an amazing game.

hkmurakami 10y ago
I've heard that TA had really great and fun mods. Any anecdotes of that you might be familiar with?
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  StarCraft had a much more fully featured custom map editor. I'd say that StarCraft had way better mods. It was the base game in TA that I really loved. I played that for my RTS fix, and I played Use Map Settings games in StarCraft for everything else. I never really played the base StarCraft game in multiplayer; TA was more fun.
- pfarnsworth 10y ago
  There was a very dedicated community around modding TA. I remember a Star Wars mod, but I never ended up playing the mods.
pzaich 10y ago
Total Annihilation was great. The big difference for me that made Starcraft superior was the uniquely balanced set of races to choose from. The two factions in TA were essentially mirror images of each other. Starcraft always felt like it had another layer of depth to strategy as a result of the various matchups between races.
- Nition 10y ago
  Totally agree that the different balanced factions made Starcraft superior BUT, the beautifully designed interface made TA superior in another way. Coming from clunky predecessors like Red Alert, the removal of micromanagement in TA was a revelation. You could queue multiple units to build, adding in multiples of 1 or 5 (Supreme Commander later made this into an even more powerful system). You could queue an infinite amount of orders for each of your units - not just pathing waypoints but everything. I used to set my Commander up to do about 15 minutes of building at the start of the game. You could tell buildings to "move" somewhere and all units coming out of those buildings would go there when built. You could tell construction units to patrol and they'd automatically repair damaged units and collect resources on the way. You could tell construction units to assist buildings and they'd help build new units. You could press Ctrl-A to select all units, Ctrl-W to select all fighting units, and other ones for airplanes, ships etc. And so on. I think it pretty much shaped the attitude I have today where in game design, I think everything that has one "correct" answer should be automated away, and everything else made as simple as possible. Of course when TA first came out the battle wasn't yet between TA and Starcraft, but between TA and Dark Reign.

shiado 10y ago

For the uninitiated, StarCraft Brood War is perhaps the most mechanically demanding game there is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRIxq_cJDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRIxq_cJDE

nas 10y ago
I watched a lot of pro broodwar back in the day. Their mechanic ability is insane. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbpCLqryN-Q
- mpeg 10y ago
  To be fair, most of the crazy fast typing is repetition of a few commands so they get used to cycling through them fast. It's all about training yourself so you can transition from macro to micro play more easily.
rhaps0dy 10y ago
Is it more demanding than Starcraft 2 or Starcraft without expansions? Why?
- dkns 10y ago
  In SC2 you have multi building selection and you can select and group as many unit as you want under one hotkey. In SC:BW you can only select and hotkey one building and unit groups are limited to 12 units. So you can have e.g. 36 units bind to keys 1-3 and 7 buildings bind to keys 4-0. Population cap in game is 200 and depending on game quite a lot of that cap will go to workers which you don't have to manage. That still leaves you with easily around 100 population or more of units that you have to micromanage. When you understand this watching somebody like Jaedong play zerg you'll understand how insane it is. He'll usually have hatcheries (buildings that build almost every zerg unit in the game) bind to 0-9 keys and then he'll manage and micro huge swarms of zerg units. Zerg are the quantity race in the game, you'll often have a ton of cheap units (e.g. zerglings or hydralisks) supplemented by few bigger units (ultralisks) and you have to manage them all (usually without keybinds), keep producing units, cast spells (using defilers) and do that all at around 400 apm (action per minutes) facing against another dude who is doing the same.

cik2e 10y ago

I've played countless hours of this game on 56k when I was a kid. Needless to say, I was ridiculously excited after hearing about this. But seeing the before and after footage in the video on StarCraft.com has left me pretty disappointed. The maps nearly look identical and that's where I hoped the biggest improvement would lie. A little more detail than the original in the environments would go a long way towards me wanting to shell out some cash. What I've seen looks like a new skin on the old engine and literally nothing else in terms of aesthetics.

wingerlang 10y ago
I think seeing it in person might change it as it supports wide screen and 4K resolution. I barely saw the difference when they showed the difference in the video.
9935c101ab17a66 10y ago
What did you expect? I think it's a tough line to talk — update the graphics, but don't change things so much that people don't recognize them. I have done zero research, but I can't imagine they won't introduce some new tilesets and maps.

ericzawo 10y ago

Boy am I optimistic for this game. I fondly remember UMS Sunken Defense, tower defense originators and of course Big Game Hunters maps. I'm really hoping a robust map editor is included. Mac friendly would be nice too, especially considering Overwatch(?!) is Windows only.

throwaway2048 10y ago
Overwatch is windows only because apple has given up on gaming on OSX, further evidence: they dont have OpenGL 4.x (which has existed for 7 years now), Vulcan, or drivers for the nvidia 1xxx series of cards.
- lloeki 10y ago
  Overwatch runs fine on either Bootcamp (so the hardware is capable enough) or in Parallels (which can't access the GPU directly, hence goes through some translation layer that end up as regular OpenGL calls, so the OS X OpenGL stack is capable enough, let alone Metal). Blizzard is just being cheap here. > they dont have OpenGL 4.x Nitpick: 4.1 is fully supported on my mid '14 Intel GPU. You sounded like OS X is locked at 3.3

niftich 10y ago

Amazing news! Though I didn't play it competitively, StarCraft was a big part of my life -- my friends and I made custom scenarios to be played in 'Use Map Settings' mode, like dozens of iterations of tower defense and the like. Given the impressive list of tune-ups, I'm hoping that some improvements will be made to mapmaking -- or perchance, even "modding", which was never really supported aside from third-party hacks. On the low end, support for mp3, Vorbis, or some other compressed audio format for custom sounds would be nice instead of .wav, but if they aimed higher they could rejuvenate a player-generated content community for years to come.

Tossrock 10y ago
The Starcraft 2 modding is incredibly in-depth* and that scene is slowly dying. * I am pretty sure that Blizzard actually made an entire other game, Heroes of the Storm, using those same tools
- dogma1138 10y ago
  HoTS uses a different engine and completely new netcode to SC2.
  - ferdbold 10y ago
    It does use the same engine as StarCraft II. It originally started as Blizzard All-Stars and was supposed to be a custom map for the SC2 arcade, but the team ran into technical roadblocks that pushed them into making HotS a separate game.
    - fuckthis 10y ago
      >the team ran into technical roadblocks The "technical roadblocks" were no easy way to monetize it as a map.
    - NTripleOne 10y ago
      Just to take you back even further, it originally started as "Blizzard DOTA".

mmgutz 10y ago

When? I want to buy NOW!

tomc1985 10y ago

Total Annihilation was waaay better! :)

Synaesthesia 10y ago
Eh different philosophies. I also loved TA though.
nercht12 10y ago
That got revised and rewritten as the FOSS game ZeroK [1]. The original is still under copyright, but the guys who did ZeroK started with it as the code base and then gradually removed all the proprietary code. Surprisingly for a FOSS game project as big as it is, it's still actively developed. [1] http://zero-k.info/ http://zero-k.info/
- tomc1985 10y ago
  There's TA:Spring project too
niuzeta 10y ago
My pick was Dark Reign. Boy was it ahead of its time. :(
TulliusCicero 10y ago
It's impossible to say, TA never took off and so never had a large competitive scene like SC/BW had, and so you can't really evaluate its balance. And the balance is probably the most legendary thing about Starcraft 1, that it was so well-balanced even though each faction was radically different.
- tomc1985 10y ago
  I always felt like SC was too balanced. TA at LAN parties was more fun because most people weren't so practiced at it (To be fair, Blizzard is excellent at doing balance. So good in fact that it also took a lot of the fun out of WoW; four hours of grinding for a +2% stat increase...)

jimyl 10y ago

Will the remastered version attract some new gamers? It would be great if people are interested in RTS again. Now seems that everyone is playing MOBA.

niuzeta 10y ago
I doubt it but I imagine the Battle.net servers bursting on day 1 to 10 of the release, as so many people who grew up with this game would give it a play.

edoceo 10y ago

Remember the HTML5 version? Too bad they shut that down. Would have preferred a paid/hosted version rather than their DMCA action. Missed an opportunity there folks.

wapz 10y ago
I never saw an HTML5 version of SC. I stopped playing long ago though by the time WoW came out.
- desdiv 10y ago
  http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/ https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js

cykr0n 10y ago

3v3 ZC No Rules Xperts See you soon...

lebanon_tn 10y ago

"Revised dialogue and audio" makes me nervous. Hopefully they don't mess with perfection, could ruin an otherwise awesome sounding project.

imjustsaying 10y ago

Never got into Starcraft, Warcraft II on the other hand

wapz 10y ago
I played SC, SC2, and WC3 fairly competitively (top 100 or so in each of those games). I tried WC2 multiplayer once and I swear grunts were in my base within ~60 seconds of the game starting. I'm sure I would have figured it out if I continued but it felt faster than a 4 pool.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  WC2 is actually an incredibly slow game. Like even BW is slow compared to SC2 (especially these days) but try going back to WC2 now and it'll feel downright glacial.
jkarneges 10y ago
Those were the days. I think I preferred WC2 because of how precise the play was.

justicezyx 10y ago

Many acclaim this. I am dismayed. Remastering Starcraft should be done almost 10 years ago. While swimming in the money pool of WoW, Blz lost their entire charm of relentless demand on quality, innovation, and dedication. They forcefully killed Starcraft with StarcraftII. They abandoned WarcraftIII, one of most popular game (among all genres) at its time. Warcraft III gets less balance patch then Starcraft, the game they intended to kill. They remastered DiabloII, rebranded it DiabloIII. They released a great Moba game, called overwatch. After almost 10 years they witnessed WarcraftIII's demise and raise of the original Dota. Now, they started reaping profit from their most loyal fans, with a remastered Starcraft. The very game that they tried to kill. I think, to me, this is a milestone of Blz's own demise. Farewell Blz, you truly redefined yourself as a mediocre game developer.

cocochanel 10y ago

I want a Warcraft III Remastered!

elcapitan 10y ago
And Warcraft II remastered!

Synaesthesia 10y ago

The following may be of interest to HN types; the Student Starcraft AI Tournament. http://sscaitournament.com http://sscaitournament.com

laowushi 10y ago

Exciting!

terrywang 10y ago

As a huge fan of Starcraft and its expansion Brood War, I am really excited. I bought StarCraft 2 after it was released but I simply didn't like it, maybe I grew older and life was busy then. However, I think it's more about the focus was shifted, when adding fancy graphics effects, the RTS elements are gone, plus added complexity. I think the remastered version will re-ignite the faded friendship between a group of guys/gals. The original game used to be our bond. However, the bond is fading over the years as I moved overseas, most folks have their own family/people/things to care about. The best thing is: "Most importantly, the strategy gameplay that StarCraft perfected years ago remains unchanged." Nuclear launch detected ;-)

jlebrech 10y ago

how much is it?

akirayamaoka 10y ago

Blur. Blur is everywhere.

gspetr 10y ago

Exciting news, but this just rubbed me the wrong way: > Do you have fond memories of LAN parties and dial-up connections, or have you heard stories of the good old days? Very arrogant, coming from the company that killed the LAN parties by forcing always-online-DRM.

nloa 10y ago

http://www.openra.net http://www.openra.net Is a remastered Red Alert (Command and Conquer) which as well is really fun to play.