9 ms·

Starcraft (A History in Two Acts)

324 points by dmazin 2y ago

zdw 2y ago
The bit about Starcraft being a hit in Korea also misses that there was a 50+ year ban on importing Japanese culture that was loosened in late 1998 through the early 2000s, which made Korea a much more receptive market for non-Japanese game makers up through that period of time. Add into that the different domestic cryptography requirements, and you get a lot of explanation of the uniqueness of the Korean computing landscape.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Whoa, thanks for this! I've always wondered why it was such a big thing in Korea, of all places.
- limitedfrom 2y ago
  While there was a ban, it wasn't an all-encompassing ban on everything Japanese. To give you a video game example, both NES and SNES were licensed to Hyundai and released as Comboy (컴보이) and Super Comboy (슈퍼컴보이). This came with the expected large releases, as you can see in Korean adverts of the time, literally singing about Super Mario, Bubble Bobble, Megaman III, Ninja Turtles, Doctor Mario, Dragon Quest, Zelda, etc.[0][1] Manga and anime were available as well, as long as they were translated and adapted to local references accordingly. Dragon Ball was available by 1989 officially[2] and Crayon Shin-chan by 1995[3]. Music and regular films were the most impacted since Japanese language could not be kept in media. Reading through the Wikipedia article for it[4], it's quite incomplete as it makes it sound like all things Japanese were banned in Korea. At least for games, anime, and manga, by mid-90s, quite a lot were available officially. While a bit biased (a whole separate issue about Namuwiki[5]), here's a perspective on the history of it if you can read Korean (or want to read through a translator)[6] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C6azkQ7Mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C6azkQ7Mw [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBHMmDBKuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBHMmDBKuE [2] https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%93%9C%EB%9E%98%EA%B3%A4%EB%B3%BC#s-10 https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%93%9C%EB%9E%98%EA%B3%A4%EB%B3%BC#s-1... [3] https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%81%AC%EB%A0%88%EC%9A%A9%20%EC%8B%A0%EC%A7%B1#s-7.1 https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%81%AC%EB%A0%88%EC%9A%A9%20%EC%8B%A0%... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_influence_on_Korean_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_influence_on_Korean_c... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki [6] https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%BC%EB%B3%B8%20%EB%8C%80%EC%A4%91%EB%AC%B8%ED%99%94%20%EA%B0%9C%EB%B0%A9 https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%BC%EB%B3%B8%20%EB%8C%80%EC%A4%91%...
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    First time I see the Hyundai branded box https://www.dibidibi.com/Data/GP/c65gadz83a/DETAIL/37996145-9421-4801-9ab1-f17c6a081718.jpeg https://www.dibidibi.com/Data/GP/c65gadz83a/DETAIL/37996145-... quite funny
- UberFly 2y ago
  I found this ban interesting and went looking: https://web-japan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj981207.html https://web-japan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj981207.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_i... https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/09/17/national/south-korea-to-ease-ban-on-japan-cultural-goods/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/09/17/national/south-...
cool_dude85 2y ago
A bit disappointed to see the discussion peter out at the release of SC2. Pro Brood War is not where it was at the time, but is still alive and well, with a much less exploitative business model, in fact. No more team houses and skeezy managers, the pro players make their money streaming these days. Gameplay-wise, it is still in an incredible place. New builds are still being developed, not just one-off cheese builds but legitimate new approaches to matchups. Depending on matchup and player, you might watch a game where the core build hasn't changed in 15 years or a game that would be unrecognizable from 3 years ago. Also, I would love for this guy to do a deep dive on the SC:BW approach to balance, which is map-based rather than based on traditional unit-based balance changes. This way the community is effectively able to balance the game themselves.
- celdon25 2y ago
  I’m looking forward to FlaSh getting back to the top of his game and hitting the #1 spot again now that he is back from his military service. Been watching every one of the Artosis casts for the past week or so. I suck at the game but it’s always a good time watching the pros.
- PuercoPop 2y ago
  > Also, I would love for this guy to do a deep dive on the SC:BW approach to balance, which is map-based rather than based on traditional unit-based balance changes. This way the community is effectively able to balance the game themselves. Yes, that it something really important that the modern landscape of competitive gaming lost and the frequency of patching increasing. Not just in BW, older fighting games, especially those arcade based ones, people found ways (which sometimes blur the lines between exploit or technique) to keep pushing the bounders. Things like Kara-cancels in 3s, were one is using a mechanic meant to facilitate the throw input to extend the range of the throw. Or wave dashing. It is wild how even character tier lists changed in the original SmashBros 64. And also how people adapt to this meta changing discoveries, like the bisu-build in BW or when Ricki Ortiz unleashed v-cancel in sfa2!
  - grogenaut 2y ago
firesteelrain 2y ago
My only beef with the article was in how in North America, broadband was challenging. We had cable modems back in 1994. I grew up in a single wide trailer with a single mom and even we could afford it. I was downloading from Napster in 1996.
- cainxinth 2y ago
  Napster released in 1999
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    I was wrong on that point
- ido 2y ago
  You were definitely a very early adopter if you had broadband in 1994. It wasn’t until the late 90s that most people started switching away from dialup.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    I guess my area in Florida had it good
    - tehwebguy 2y ago
      Sounds like it. My house in Miami was subject to Adelphia (a notorious scam company) while my friend 20 miles away had fiber to the curb in 2002 or something.
      - firesteelrain 2y ago
        We had Roadrunner
- seattle_spring 2y ago
  You were very much not the norm. Also, cable internet wasn't even released to the public until 1996. The only residential "broadband" options at that time were DSL and ISDN, which were both expensive and had very limited proliferation. Only 10 million people had cable internet in 2002.
Waterluvian 2y ago
What I really want to know is why all three worker units float. What caused that design? Was it a result of having to balance spider mines? A happy accident? A conscious design from the start? If so why? This keeps me up at night.
- Havoc 2y ago
  There is also a the man in the tower for terrans - doesn't count towards supply. https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/iod6dr/in_response_to_the_missile_turret_guy_realizations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/iod6dr/in_respon...
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    Legend has it that the missile turret operator and hurl a load further than a devourer.
- Maxatar 2y ago
  What do you mean by float? If you mean that work units can move through other units when mining minerals, that is a conscious design decision that was made for performance reasons. Having upwards of 40 worker units having to constantly calculate paths to and from the command center without being allowed to move through each other or move through other units that might cross their path would have slowed the game down to a crawl. Of course people figured this out and managed to exploit it for other purposes, but those were seen to be too minor to bother fixing.
  - Levitz 2y ago
    He means that they literally hover over the ground. They don't walk, their movement animation doesn't involve legs.
    - philistine 2y ago
      I had no idea the terran SCV floated. I thought it had wheels.
netcoyote 2y ago
As a data point, the Blizzard sales team’s projections were that we would sell 4,000 copies of StarCraft in a year in South Korea, so there was no reason to in localize the game. First year sales were on the order of 100x that amount, quite the surprise for everyone at Blizzard!
- nightowl_games 2y ago
  "we"? Were you on that team? I'm a long time StarCraft lover, so huge Kudos if so.
  - h1x 2y ago
    From the profile info: Patrick Wyatt - game developer and programmer (Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Guild Wars, battle.net) - co-founder of ArenaNet - blogger: www.codeofhonor.com Edit: remove backticks
    - agumonkey 2y ago
      oh what a surprise, legend
    - Sakos 2y ago
      Damn. That reminds me, I really wish there were more information about the early days of ArenaNet. I think what they did with servers and networking in GW1 (and eventually GW2) is legendary. They had instancing, no realm sharding, streaming updates, etc. years before anybody else. And GW1's gameplay design in general was so unique.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- justin66 2y ago
  > First year sales were on the order of 100x that amount To be fair, that kind of proves you did not really need to localize the game.
llIIllIIllIIl 2y ago
I’ve attended Blizzcon 2018 and it was a very memorable experience. Not just because it was the pinnacle of Starcraft for me, but also the moment when i saw the first non-korean player to win the championship. Serral, the champion on that year and one of the greatest Zerg player ever, wouldn’t be coming as underdog to the matches with Koreans that dominated the stage for almost two decades. Once the final match was over i heard the most humble and respectful words from the champion to the audience and other players. This was such an inspirational moment for me. Shortly after my starcraft journey ended, the interest faded, but that speech left a huge mark on my further activities and perception of the competition in anything. Reminded me that the race is long and at the end it’s always with yourself.
- bigcat12345678 2y ago
  They dumb down the mechanics so much so that Korean supremacy is overthrown
  - energy123 2y ago
    Korea stopped dominating because Starcraft dropped in popularity inside Korea relative to newer games. Then the world's much larger population size produced a few players who could outcompete them.
    - starcraftgamer 2y ago
      SC2 was never that popular in Korea to be honest. SC1 pros came over to the game because there was decent money in it, but in PC Bangs people were still playing SC1 and League far more often. Blizzard tried to spend a lot to market the game in Korea but it didn't really take off with the general public. Even today the GSL (the most competitive individual league for SC2) just had its last championship and is cancelled while the ASL (the most competitive individual league for SC1) is still going strong. However it was much bigger before SC2's release. Not to take anything away from Serral, he's a fantastic player, but Korea was never as invested in SC2 as they were in SC1. Players were getting by on extremely strong mechanics and there wasn't the kind of professional team infrastructure that existed around SC1.
electrodank 2y ago
The person who returned to them the source code disk has done everyone dirty. I’m optimistic Microsoft will eventually open source stuff but goddammit.
- Lammy 2y ago
  Strong agree. A game this old and this beloved should belong to everyone at this point.
- Devasta 2y ago
  An open source StarCraft could have lead to a renaissance of the genre, but he found it more important to get like 250 quid of unsold Overwatch trash from the blizz store. I did check was there any follow-up on the story and found out the guy in question has since gotten into NFTs, an irony so great I can only laugh.
m463 2y ago
I stopped playing when Blizzard made you create an online account to play your newly purchased single-player game. and no lan play. wonder if that kind of friction kills things.
- abletonlive 2y ago
  it doesn't. you're a radical
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    It killed it for me also, and really gaming in general. If I need permission from your server to play, then it's not really mine. And the whole thing with StarCraft for me and my friends is that this was our thing. Several of us are now network engineers because we had to learn that skillset to play StarCraft at a LAN party without lag. The phone lines weren't cutting it. Injecting blizzard servers into the loop, to be tolerated without recourse, totally ruined it for those of us who didn't live near a decent ISP. We were so excited about the sequel and it turned out to be pretty much unplayable online.
    - Aeolun 2y ago
      > If I need permission from your server to play, then it's not really mine. If you already need permission to even boot your PC, what more is it to need permission to start a game? It’s a sad age we’re living in.
      - kzrdude 2y ago
        On one hand, open source thrives in a very well connected computer world, on the other hand, the fact that programs can phone home and update themselves every day has redefined software entirely, and not always in a good way. We are making much less robust software today. Both because it relies on connectivity, and because we can ship it first and fix it later.
- IggleSniggle 2y ago
Lammy 2y ago
Nice synchronicity — I just reinstalled Brood War last week. Does anybody know the current state of Battle.net emulation for the older non-Remastered game? The bnetd drama was twenty years ago at this point and I would like to be able to play online without the Microsoft-Vivendi-Activision-Zenimax-Blizzard Borg having any say in it. RE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd I prefer to patch only up to 1.15.x to keep network compatibility with the Classic Mac OS version of the game :)
- bitwize 2y ago
  Emulation of Battle.net is a DMCA violation, therefore a felony violation of copyright to use or distribute in the USA. There is PVPGN, which has recent activity: https://github.com/pvpgn https://github.com/pvpgn Microsoft owns both GitHub and all Blizzard IP, so it's only a matter of time before they send a DMCA takedown order to themselves to remove this copyright-infringing material :)
  - adastra22 2y ago
    I don’t think that is true? It would be a DMCA violation to distribute, not to use.
    - bitwize 2y ago
      Circumventing an effective copyright measure (use) is a violation of section 1201, as is trafficking in circumvention tools (distribution). The major difference is that the act of circumventing itself may be protected by one of the exemptions approved by the Librarian of Congress every three years; there are no exemptions of any kind for the act of trafficking (which means that distribution of bnetd and PVPGN is illegal in all cases). Near as I can tell, circumventing the access restrictions to enable netplay on a video game that is no longer distributed is not a DMCA exemption. (Circumventing DRM for a game whose DRM servers have been shut down is an exemption for local play only.)
      - cogman10 2y ago
ackbar03 2y ago
>Adham and Morhaime fostered as non-hierarchical a structure as possible at Blizzard, such that everyone, regardless of their ostensible role — from programmers to artists, testers to marketers — felt empowered to make design suggestions, knowing that they would be acted upon if they were judged worthy by their peers. General question, how do you balance between trying to get everyone's feedback vs just being more fast and efficient?especially in the early stages where time is usually pretty critical
- nvy 2y ago
  I think, as Blizzard demonstrated, it's not universally true that faster is better. In some markets it's better to be slower to market with a better product, e.g. Apple
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Blizzard was famous at the time for having a release date of "when it's done" for all of their project. One of the lessons to learn from their success in those times is that, at least in art/wntertainment, time is not nearly as critical as quality.
- netcoyote 2y ago
  At that time, by working ungodly amounts of hours every week. [edit] which is not sustainable and I do not recommend!
  - rvba 2y ago
    Thank you gor providing the thousands of hours of fun playing your games!
magnat 2y ago
I strongly recommend reading Pat Wyatt's blog [1] for some insights about an early Starcraft development from more technical point of view. [1] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  It is incredible that you could run such game on a 486 and play online using a 28.8 Kbps modem. StarCraft II requires far more resources and bandwidth to play while not being necessarily more fun in a directly proportional manner. Another similar article from that era: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-28-8-network-programming-in-age-of-empires-and-beyond https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...
  - treme 2y ago
    it barely ran on 486 fwiw, it would have a major ongoing pause every 2 seconds or so at beginning, getting worse as game progressed. -anecdote from a boy that badly wished for a 586.
  - momocowcow 2y ago
    Exactly, I remember the game for not being technically impressive upon release. 2D games were looked down upon in 1998. I worked at another game studio at the time of release and all our titles under production were 3D. We played the hell out of it at LAN parties but felt that technically it already was dated.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - 29athrowaway 2y ago
      I would not say it looked dated. The low polygon count 3D games of 1998 were still not aesthetically superior to 2D games. Even if you had a GPU back than (better known at the time as "graphics accelerator"), the graphics were not that good.
throw156754228 2y ago
Whatever happened to Giyom (Gulliaume Patry)? I saw ElKY (Bertrand Grospeller) is a well known poker player now.
- treme 2y ago
  Running a French restaurant in Korea, according to korean wiki https://namu.wiki/w/%EA%B8%B0%EC%9A%A4%20%ED%8C%A8%ED%8A%B8%EB%A6%AC https://namu.wiki/w/%EA%B8%B0%EC%9A%A4%20%ED%8C%A8%ED%8A%B8%...
throw156754228 2y ago
Did anyone else think gameplay was not anywhere near as enjoyable in SC2? There was something a bit more raw about SC1/Brood War which I felt went missing in SC2. I didn't invest enough time into SC2 though.
- fendy3002 2y ago
  I played SC2 for only a short time, so I may misremember. The transition to 3d does not feel great, it makes movement a bit sluggish and slow. Additionally, 2d enables more / exaggerated visual effects (like tank shot blast) and consistent visual sprites.
  - mklepaczewski 2y ago
    You can turn off these effects.
    - throw156754228 2y ago
      Turn off which effects?
- wes-k 2y ago
  I couldn't get into it. I wasn’t sure if it was the game itself, my movement away from being a gamer, or just missing the game I knew so well.
- neogodless 2y ago
  For me, I think it's that you learned every nook and cranny of StarCraft. You knew the units and their strength, their health, how quickly 12 of unit X would wipe out 24 of unit Y. You could basically predict health bars in combat (assuming you knew upgrade level.) In StarCraft II, everything felt softer, less crisp, less exact. Throw 40 marines at something. Throw 100 zerglings at something. Just keep throwing things out while you focus on upgrades and expansion. You didn't know if you would win or lose a battle, so you just spam the enemy with the units you expected to do best. But you never felt quite so in control as you do with the original. That's what it was for me.
leloctai 2y ago
I've yet seen another game with as good pathfinding as StarCraft 2. The way 100s of units flow around another 100s of moving units like water is very impressive, even today. Does anyone know what's the special sauce?
- adastral 2y ago
  From https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-hack https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-... > whenever harvesters are on their way to get minerals, or when they’re on the way back carrying those minerals, they ignore collisions with other units Maybe that's part of the fluid behaviour you noticed. The blog contains more technical posts about StarCraft 2, so you might find that "special sauce" somewhere else in there :)
  - murermader 2y ago
    This is about harvesters, which is only the case when they are mining minerals / gas. The commenter was talking about army movements, units which actually collide with each other.
  - leloctai 2y ago
    The blog is interesting, but it is about sc1. Pathfinding in sc1 is so terrible that moving units where you want is part of what's make one a pro player.
- symmetricsaurus 2y ago
  Apparently smart triangulation of the game world, A*, plus boids pretty much. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014514/AI-Navigation-It-s-Not https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014514/AI-Navigation-It-s-Not
miiiiiike 2y ago
What’s amazing about Blizzard is that they got me so early that I saw Warhammer Fantasy and 40K as the store brands until sometime in my twenties.
barmstrong 2y ago
Someone should make a documentary about the history of StarCraft and where it's going next I also wish we saw more AI leagues and gameplay One of the best games of all time.
2Pacalypse- 2y ago
One less talked about thing when discussing StarCraft, that might be more pertinent to HN audience, is that this game was almost endlessly hackable. And I mean that in the truest sense of that word. Many a careers were launched by playing around with OllyDbg and learning to reverse engineer code all so you could create an awesome plugin [0] for the community. Which brings me to my next point, which is that the community aspect of StarCraft is a huge part of why it remained popular for so long. As previously mentioned, there were hackers and programmers developing awesome tools that helped the scene, but also there were map makers which were essential in keeping the game balanced. One little known fact about StarCraft is that the last balance patch released by Blizzard was in 2001, at the early beginnings of the pro scene. After that, the game was kept fresh and balanced by community map makers. Combine that with people who created websites where you could follow news about Korean pro scene (TeamLiquid has its roots here), talk with other people about StarCraft, and other people who organized tournaments and did everything else; and you get a formula which almost ensures the longetivity of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people playing and following this game in 20 years time. I know I'll be one of them. [0] - https://github.com/TheEngineeringBay/Awesome-Broodwar-Resources https://github.com/TheEngineeringBay/Awesome-Broodwar-Resour...
- wes-k 2y ago
  SCUMS! (StarCraft Use Map Settings). These maps provided a wide array of games and I believe popularized or gave birth to a few. I remember tower defense, level up games where you and the other players explore the map and gain upgrades, a predator game where one player is chosen randomly to be the killer in a horror style hunt. Imagine, each map, possibly an entire new game, sometimes being discovered for the first time together with strangers. Such a fun and amazing time!
- rvba 2y ago
  The game also had custom maps that allowed for sandboxed programming / scripting. A lot of very clever custom maps ("use map settings" / UMS) were made. MOBA genere spawned from a Starcraft custom map called Aeon of strife. Starcraft also had a map called "the unknown" which is basically Among Us - made years ago. There were "turret defense" maps, RPG maps, maps where you controlled one unit and tried to dodge things (bound maps) and many other maps that just changed the balance. In the golden times players didnt have to play the cutthroat 1:1 all the timr - you could spend days playing custom maps (archives have tens of thousands of them), custom campaigns, modes with more players like 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, or even 8 player everyone for themself. Apart from "difficult" maps, there was a whole community playing maps with (nearly) unlimited resources - "fastest maps" and "big game hunters" (BGH). Those maps were easier so no "ladder anxiety" by having to play the best all the time. Starcraft 1 gave a lot of freedom to have fun. You didnt have to participate in the incredibly difficult duels. You could play a custom map, or some 3v3 with your friends - where overall skill level was lower, but fun level was high. Killing custom maps is in my opiniin one of the reasons why Starcraft 2 failed. Blizzard wanted to capitalize on them, but didnt know how. In Starcraft Brood War there was this game list - you could select UMS mode and pick from probably 100 open games. In Starcraft 2 you could only play what blizzard wanted you to play. I guess Blizzard was unhappy that Warcraft 3 spawned the whole DOTA game - which was also a custom map. Regarding hacking - many people learned java writing bots for Diablo 2.
fenesiistvan 2y ago
I used to play Starcraft a lot, but i don't know anything about mods, extensions, multiplayer, etc. From where can I download the best current release (official or not, i don't care) + maybe some extra such as better/HD textures? Is there any easy path to follow?
- neogodless 2y ago
  I cannot tell from your comment if you're aware of StarCraft: Remastered - it's $15, includes original/Brood Wars, and has modernized skin, but plays identically (and is compatible with) the original. $15 USD. https://starcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/ https://starcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/
  - zzlk 2y ago
    to be clear because this is often a point of confusion (I believe it was done intentionally to be confusing but I digress). The remastered client is actually free, the HD skin (and ladder play) is $15. So you can play online with custom maps and the campaign and so on for free.
stared 2y ago
There is a lively stage of SC2 YouTubers, be they commentators (like LowkoTV) or gammers. Harstem is dark and edgy, including his iconic series "Is it IMBA or do I suck?". At the same time, it is lovely to watch challenges by MaNa and uThermal - especially on how much fun they have, regardless of whether they are winning. Also, it is still interesting to see the diversity of grandmasters' personal play styles. In a mature game, one would expect it to converge to a single "optimal" playstyle. Yet, even after the dust of a new balance patch settles, it is impressive. And for a reminder, SC2: Legacy of the Void is over 8 years old.
FrustratedMonky 2y ago
Really hoping that Microsoft buying Blizzard, might lead to a resurgence in interest and development, along the lines of the resources put into Age of Empires.
_fat_santa 2y ago
I have such fond memories of the original Starcraft. When I was like 7 or 8, my parents got a computer for the first time (this was ~2004) and installed Starcraft on it. We still didn't have internet so all I got was the single player aspect but I loved it and must have dumped close to 100 hours playing it over the next 2 years or so. After that I stopped playing Starcraft but when I was in high school I picked it up again and started playing online. The regular matches were cool but the coolest matches were "custom scenarios", my favorite being "mouse hunt". It was a scenario where one team had the weakest players and the other team had the strongest players but the weak team could create barriers that the strong team couldn't destroy. From there the small team would slowly build up and defeat the stronger team or the strong team would wipe everyone out before they could. It's been years since I played the OG Starcraft but I think I'll be picking it up again soon. It's just such a damn good game and it's really stood the test of time where even if you pick it up today it doesn't feel like a dated game, Blizzard made a truly timeless game with Starcraft and that's not an easy thing to do. Never played Starcraft II but from what I heard they mostly kept to the original formula and many folks love that game.
- josh2600 2y ago
  My pops wouldn’t let us play on the internet at first so my brother played Warcraft and StarCraft using AppleTalk. I remember the only cable we had barely reached between the two computers so we had it hanging tight and if someone tripped over the cable we’d disconnect and have to start over.
throw156754228 2y ago
I just want to go play a game of broodwar now on battlenet. Guessing this isn't possible?
- vitaflo 2y ago
  Of course it’s possible. Just buy SC Remastered and get online.
flarco 2y ago
Who else still listens to the StarCraft music OST? I listen to it a few times a year and get in the zone.
- kchr 2y ago
  I had the Terran 1 theme as my cell phone ringtone for a long time :-)
jabedude 2y ago
I will never understand how Starcraft II failed
einpoklum 2y ago
> Starcraft was a superb game by any standard, the most tactically intricate, balanced, and polished RTS to date I'd say M.A.X. was no less tactically intricate - albeit through infinite configurability of things.
ayakang31415 2y ago
This game brings me so much nostalgia. I used to play SC when I was a middle school student from 2000 to 2002. I was so good at the game that around my age group I was probably the best in Seoul. I also participated at a pro tournament (ongamenet I believe), but lost to NaDa during the knockout stage. Then I moved to the states so I stopped playing.
zzlk 2y ago
I see many people in the comments nostalgically talking about the custom mapping scene and how it got them into programming. The same is true for me, so I think here is a good place to plug my starcraft custom map archive website [0]. In 2020 because of the pandemic StarCraft enjoyed a surge of popularity again, I went looking for some custom maps that I remembered from the early 2000s but I couldn't find them. The existing websites at the time were not solving the problem for me so I set out to solve it myself. The website is a passion project for me, I don't want it to generate any revenue. It's been a fun ride and it's now easily the largest map archive that has ever existed. I think eventually I'll make a show HN post about it when I implement a few more cool features, but that will have to be for a later date. [0] https://scmscx.com https://scmscx.com
coryfklein 2y ago
Competitive StarCraft (and it's successor) is very much alive still today! I recommend checking out sc2casts's best-of-year lists[0] for each year where you can find a selection of what ends up being the most "interesting" matches played throughout the year. These can range from games that explore a new aspect of the meta, to nail-biting matches where the apparent loser makes an unbelievable comeback, to the career-making game of an upstart unseating the king. (I have no affiliation whatsoever with sc2casts.) [0] https://sc2casts.com/best-of-2023/ https://sc2casts.com/best-of-2023/
starcraftgamer 2y ago
Long time HN lurker, decided to make an account because I have some knowledge about this. I think there are two interesting things the article misses around PC bangs: 1. StarCraft could run on a potato. The PCs in these cafes were not always the most modern, and the lack of system requirements was a big boon to StarCraft taking off. This is also why League of Legends became very popular in South Korea. 2. Ironically, piracy. The article mentions that cafes bought copies of StarCraft to install on their PCs. This isn't quite correct, in practice a single CD key would be used to install StarCraft on all PCs in the cafe. StarCraft Brood War in Korea is alive and well. It's had a recent resurgence and is currently the most watched game on their popular local streaming service Afreeca (essentially Korean Twitch.tv).

324 points by dmazin 2y ago

zdw 2y ago

The bit about Starcraft being a hit in Korea also misses that there was a 50+ year ban on importing Japanese culture that was loosened in late 1998 through the early 2000s, which made Korea a much more receptive market for non-Japanese game makers up through that period of time. Add into that the different domestic cryptography requirements, and you get a lot of explanation of the uniqueness of the Korean computing landscape.

moralestapia 2y ago
Whoa, thanks for this! I've always wondered why it was such a big thing in Korea, of all places.
limitedfrom 2y ago
While there was a ban, it wasn't an all-encompassing ban on everything Japanese. To give you a video game example, both NES and SNES were licensed to Hyundai and released as Comboy (컴보이) and Super Comboy (슈퍼컴보이). This came with the expected large releases, as you can see in Korean adverts of the time, literally singing about Super Mario, Bubble Bobble, Megaman III, Ninja Turtles, Doctor Mario, Dragon Quest, Zelda, etc.[0][1] Manga and anime were available as well, as long as they were translated and adapted to local references accordingly. Dragon Ball was available by 1989 officially[2] and Crayon Shin-chan by 1995[3]. Music and regular films were the most impacted since Japanese language could not be kept in media. Reading through the Wikipedia article for it[4], it's quite incomplete as it makes it sound like all things Japanese were banned in Korea. At least for games, anime, and manga, by mid-90s, quite a lot were available officially. While a bit biased (a whole separate issue about Namuwiki[5]), here's a perspective on the history of it if you can read Korean (or want to read through a translator)[6] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C6azkQ7Mw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_C6azkQ7Mw [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBHMmDBKuE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzBHMmDBKuE [2] https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%93%9C%EB%9E%98%EA%B3%A4%EB%B3%BC#s-10 https://namu.wiki/w/%EB%93%9C%EB%9E%98%EA%B3%A4%EB%B3%BC#s-1... [3] https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%81%AC%EB%A0%88%EC%9A%A9%20%EC%8B%A0%EC%A7%B1#s-7.1 https://namu.wiki/w/%ED%81%AC%EB%A0%88%EC%9A%A9%20%EC%8B%A0%... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_influence_on_Korean_culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_influence_on_Korean_c... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Namuwiki [6] https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%BC%EB%B3%B8%20%EB%8C%80%EC%A4%91%EB%AC%B8%ED%99%94%20%EA%B0%9C%EB%B0%A9 https://namu.wiki/w/%EC%9D%BC%EB%B3%B8%20%EB%8C%80%EC%A4%91%...
- agumonkey 2y ago
  First time I see the Hyundai branded box https://www.dibidibi.com/Data/GP/c65gadz83a/DETAIL/37996145-9421-4801-9ab1-f17c6a081718.jpeg https://www.dibidibi.com/Data/GP/c65gadz83a/DETAIL/37996145-... quite funny
UberFly 2y ago
I found this ban interesting and went looking: https://web-japan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj981207.html https://web-japan.org/trends98/honbun/ntj981207.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_Japanese_media_i... https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/09/17/national/south-korea-to-ease-ban-on-japan-cultural-goods/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2003/09/17/national/south-...

cool_dude85 2y ago

A bit disappointed to see the discussion peter out at the release of SC2. Pro Brood War is not where it was at the time, but is still alive and well, with a much less exploitative business model, in fact. No more team houses and skeezy managers, the pro players make their money streaming these days. Gameplay-wise, it is still in an incredible place. New builds are still being developed, not just one-off cheese builds but legitimate new approaches to matchups. Depending on matchup and player, you might watch a game where the core build hasn't changed in 15 years or a game that would be unrecognizable from 3 years ago. Also, I would love for this guy to do a deep dive on the SC:BW approach to balance, which is map-based rather than based on traditional unit-based balance changes. This way the community is effectively able to balance the game themselves.

celdon25 2y ago
I’m looking forward to FlaSh getting back to the top of his game and hitting the #1 spot again now that he is back from his military service. Been watching every one of the Artosis casts for the past week or so. I suck at the game but it’s always a good time watching the pros.
PuercoPop 2y ago
> Also, I would love for this guy to do a deep dive on the SC:BW approach to balance, which is map-based rather than based on traditional unit-based balance changes. This way the community is effectively able to balance the game themselves. Yes, that it something really important that the modern landscape of competitive gaming lost and the frequency of patching increasing. Not just in BW, older fighting games, especially those arcade based ones, people found ways (which sometimes blur the lines between exploit or technique) to keep pushing the bounders. Things like Kara-cancels in 3s, were one is using a mechanic meant to facilitate the throw input to extend the range of the throw. Or wave dashing. It is wild how even character tier lists changed in the original SmashBros 64. And also how people adapt to this meta changing discoveries, like the bisu-build in BW or when Ricki Ortiz unleashed v-cancel in sfa2!
- grogenaut 2y ago

firesteelrain 2y ago

My only beef with the article was in how in North America, broadband was challenging. We had cable modems back in 1994. I grew up in a single wide trailer with a single mom and even we could afford it. I was downloading from Napster in 1996.

cainxinth 2y ago
Napster released in 1999
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  I was wrong on that point
ido 2y ago
You were definitely a very early adopter if you had broadband in 1994. It wasn’t until the late 90s that most people started switching away from dialup.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  I guess my area in Florida had it good
  - tehwebguy 2y ago
    Sounds like it. My house in Miami was subject to Adelphia (a notorious scam company) while my friend 20 miles away had fiber to the curb in 2002 or something.
    - firesteelrain 2y ago
      We had Roadrunner
seattle_spring 2y ago
You were very much not the norm. Also, cable internet wasn't even released to the public until 1996. The only residential "broadband" options at that time were DSL and ISDN, which were both expensive and had very limited proliferation. Only 10 million people had cable internet in 2002.

Waterluvian 2y ago

What I really want to know is why all three worker units float. What caused that design? Was it a result of having to balance spider mines? A happy accident? A conscious design from the start? If so why? This keeps me up at night.

Havoc 2y ago
There is also a the man in the tower for terrans - doesn't count towards supply. https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/iod6dr/in_response_to_the_missile_turret_guy_realizations/ https://old.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/iod6dr/in_respon...
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Legend has it that the missile turret operator and hurl a load further than a devourer.
Maxatar 2y ago
What do you mean by float? If you mean that work units can move through other units when mining minerals, that is a conscious design decision that was made for performance reasons. Having upwards of 40 worker units having to constantly calculate paths to and from the command center without being allowed to move through each other or move through other units that might cross their path would have slowed the game down to a crawl. Of course people figured this out and managed to exploit it for other purposes, but those were seen to be too minor to bother fixing.
- Levitz 2y ago
  He means that they literally hover over the ground. They don't walk, their movement animation doesn't involve legs.
  - philistine 2y ago
    I had no idea the terran SCV floated. I thought it had wheels.

netcoyote 2y ago

As a data point, the Blizzard sales team’s projections were that we would sell 4,000 copies of StarCraft in a year in South Korea, so there was no reason to in localize the game. First year sales were on the order of 100x that amount, quite the surprise for everyone at Blizzard!

nightowl_games 2y ago
"we"? Were you on that team? I'm a long time StarCraft lover, so huge Kudos if so.
- h1x 2y ago
  From the profile info: Patrick Wyatt - game developer and programmer (Warcraft, Starcraft, Diablo, Guild Wars, battle.net) - co-founder of ArenaNet - blogger: www.codeofhonor.com Edit: remove backticks
  - agumonkey 2y ago
    oh what a surprise, legend
  - Sakos 2y ago
    Damn. That reminds me, I really wish there were more information about the early days of ArenaNet. I think what they did with servers and networking in GW1 (and eventually GW2) is legendary. They had instancing, no realm sharding, streaming updates, etc. years before anybody else. And GW1's gameplay design in general was so unique.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
justin66 2y ago
> First year sales were on the order of 100x that amount To be fair, that kind of proves you did not really need to localize the game.

llIIllIIllIIl 2y ago

I’ve attended Blizzcon 2018 and it was a very memorable experience. Not just because it was the pinnacle of Starcraft for me, but also the moment when i saw the first non-korean player to win the championship. Serral, the champion on that year and one of the greatest Zerg player ever, wouldn’t be coming as underdog to the matches with Koreans that dominated the stage for almost two decades. Once the final match was over i heard the most humble and respectful words from the champion to the audience and other players. This was such an inspirational moment for me. Shortly after my starcraft journey ended, the interest faded, but that speech left a huge mark on my further activities and perception of the competition in anything. Reminded me that the race is long and at the end it’s always with yourself.

bigcat12345678 2y ago
They dumb down the mechanics so much so that Korean supremacy is overthrown
- energy123 2y ago
  Korea stopped dominating because Starcraft dropped in popularity inside Korea relative to newer games. Then the world's much larger population size produced a few players who could outcompete them.
  - starcraftgamer 2y ago
    SC2 was never that popular in Korea to be honest. SC1 pros came over to the game because there was decent money in it, but in PC Bangs people were still playing SC1 and League far more often. Blizzard tried to spend a lot to market the game in Korea but it didn't really take off with the general public. Even today the GSL (the most competitive individual league for SC2) just had its last championship and is cancelled while the ASL (the most competitive individual league for SC1) is still going strong. However it was much bigger before SC2's release. Not to take anything away from Serral, he's a fantastic player, but Korea was never as invested in SC2 as they were in SC1. Players were getting by on extremely strong mechanics and there wasn't the kind of professional team infrastructure that existed around SC1.

electrodank 2y ago

The person who returned to them the source code disk has done everyone dirty. I’m optimistic Microsoft will eventually open source stuff but goddammit.

Lammy 2y ago
Strong agree. A game this old and this beloved should belong to everyone at this point.
Devasta 2y ago
An open source StarCraft could have lead to a renaissance of the genre, but he found it more important to get like 250 quid of unsold Overwatch trash from the blizz store. I did check was there any follow-up on the story and found out the guy in question has since gotten into NFTs, an irony so great I can only laugh.

m463 2y ago

I stopped playing when Blizzard made you create an online account to play your newly purchased single-player game. and no lan play. wonder if that kind of friction kills things.

abletonlive 2y ago
it doesn't. you're a radical
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  It killed it for me also, and really gaming in general. If I need permission from your server to play, then it's not really mine. And the whole thing with StarCraft for me and my friends is that this was our thing. Several of us are now network engineers because we had to learn that skillset to play StarCraft at a LAN party without lag. The phone lines weren't cutting it. Injecting blizzard servers into the loop, to be tolerated without recourse, totally ruined it for those of us who didn't live near a decent ISP. We were so excited about the sequel and it turned out to be pretty much unplayable online.
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > If I need permission from your server to play, then it's not really mine. If you already need permission to even boot your PC, what more is it to need permission to start a game? It’s a sad age we’re living in.
    - kzrdude 2y ago
      On one hand, open source thrives in a very well connected computer world, on the other hand, the fact that programs can phone home and update themselves every day has redefined software entirely, and not always in a good way. We are making much less robust software today. Both because it relies on connectivity, and because we can ship it first and fix it later.
IggleSniggle 2y ago

Lammy 2y ago

Nice synchronicity — I just reinstalled Brood War last week. Does anybody know the current state of Battle.net emulation for the older non-Remastered game? The bnetd drama was twenty years ago at this point and I would like to be able to play online without the Microsoft-Vivendi-Activision-Zenimax-Blizzard Borg having any say in it. RE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd I prefer to patch only up to 1.15.x to keep network compatibility with the Classic Mac OS version of the game :)

bitwize 2y ago
Emulation of Battle.net is a DMCA violation, therefore a felony violation of copyright to use or distribute in the USA. There is PVPGN, which has recent activity: https://github.com/pvpgn https://github.com/pvpgn Microsoft owns both GitHub and all Blizzard IP, so it's only a matter of time before they send a DMCA takedown order to themselves to remove this copyright-infringing material :)
- adastra22 2y ago
  I don’t think that is true? It would be a DMCA violation to distribute, not to use.
  - bitwize 2y ago
    Circumventing an effective copyright measure (use) is a violation of section 1201, as is trafficking in circumvention tools (distribution). The major difference is that the act of circumventing itself may be protected by one of the exemptions approved by the Librarian of Congress every three years; there are no exemptions of any kind for the act of trafficking (which means that distribution of bnetd and PVPGN is illegal in all cases). Near as I can tell, circumventing the access restrictions to enable netplay on a video game that is no longer distributed is not a DMCA exemption. (Circumventing DRM for a game whose DRM servers have been shut down is an exemption for local play only.)
    - cogman10 2y ago

ackbar03 2y ago

>Adham and Morhaime fostered as non-hierarchical a structure as possible at Blizzard, such that everyone, regardless of their ostensible role — from programmers to artists, testers to marketers — felt empowered to make design suggestions, knowing that they would be acted upon if they were judged worthy by their peers. General question, how do you balance between trying to get everyone's feedback vs just being more fast and efficient?especially in the early stages where time is usually pretty critical

nvy 2y ago
I think, as Blizzard demonstrated, it's not universally true that faster is better. In some markets it's better to be slower to market with a better product, e.g. Apple
tsimionescu 2y ago
Blizzard was famous at the time for having a release date of "when it's done" for all of their project. One of the lessons to learn from their success in those times is that, at least in art/wntertainment, time is not nearly as critical as quality.
netcoyote 2y ago
At that time, by working ungodly amounts of hours every week. [edit] which is not sustainable and I do not recommend!
- rvba 2y ago
  Thank you gor providing the thousands of hours of fun playing your games!

magnat 2y ago

I strongly recommend reading Pat Wyatt's blog [1] for some insights about an early Starcraft development from more technical point of view. [1] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-starcraft https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...

29athrowaway 2y ago
It is incredible that you could run such game on a 486 and play online using a 28.8 Kbps modem. StarCraft II requires far more resources and bandwidth to play while not being necessarily more fun in a directly proportional manner. Another similar article from that era: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-28-8-network-programming-in-age-of-empires-and-beyond https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/1500-archers-on-a-...
- treme 2y ago
  it barely ran on 486 fwiw, it would have a major ongoing pause every 2 seconds or so at beginning, getting worse as game progressed. -anecdote from a boy that badly wished for a 586.
- momocowcow 2y ago
  Exactly, I remember the game for not being technically impressive upon release. 2D games were looked down upon in 1998. I worked at another game studio at the time of release and all our titles under production were 3D. We played the hell out of it at LAN parties but felt that technically it already was dated.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 29athrowaway 2y ago
    I would not say it looked dated. The low polygon count 3D games of 1998 were still not aesthetically superior to 2D games. Even if you had a GPU back than (better known at the time as "graphics accelerator"), the graphics were not that good.

throw156754228 2y ago

Whatever happened to Giyom (Gulliaume Patry)? I saw ElKY (Bertrand Grospeller) is a well known poker player now.

treme 2y ago
Running a French restaurant in Korea, according to korean wiki https://namu.wiki/w/%EA%B8%B0%EC%9A%A4%20%ED%8C%A8%ED%8A%B8%EB%A6%AC https://namu.wiki/w/%EA%B8%B0%EC%9A%A4%20%ED%8C%A8%ED%8A%B8%...

throw156754228 2y ago

Did anyone else think gameplay was not anywhere near as enjoyable in SC2? There was something a bit more raw about SC1/Brood War which I felt went missing in SC2. I didn't invest enough time into SC2 though.

fendy3002 2y ago
I played SC2 for only a short time, so I may misremember. The transition to 3d does not feel great, it makes movement a bit sluggish and slow. Additionally, 2d enables more / exaggerated visual effects (like tank shot blast) and consistent visual sprites.
- mklepaczewski 2y ago
  You can turn off these effects.
  - throw156754228 2y ago
    Turn off which effects?
wes-k 2y ago
I couldn't get into it. I wasn’t sure if it was the game itself, my movement away from being a gamer, or just missing the game I knew so well.
neogodless 2y ago
For me, I think it's that you learned every nook and cranny of StarCraft. You knew the units and their strength, their health, how quickly 12 of unit X would wipe out 24 of unit Y. You could basically predict health bars in combat (assuming you knew upgrade level.) In StarCraft II, everything felt softer, less crisp, less exact. Throw 40 marines at something. Throw 100 zerglings at something. Just keep throwing things out while you focus on upgrades and expansion. You didn't know if you would win or lose a battle, so you just spam the enemy with the units you expected to do best. But you never felt quite so in control as you do with the original. That's what it was for me.

leloctai 2y ago

I've yet seen another game with as good pathfinding as StarCraft 2. The way 100s of units flow around another 100s of moving units like water is very impressive, even today. Does anyone know what's the special sauce?

adastral 2y ago
From https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-hack https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-starcraft-path-finding-... > whenever harvesters are on their way to get minerals, or when they’re on the way back carrying those minerals, they ignore collisions with other units Maybe that's part of the fluid behaviour you noticed. The blog contains more technical posts about StarCraft 2, so you might find that "special sauce" somewhere else in there :)
- murermader 2y ago
  This is about harvesters, which is only the case when they are mining minerals / gas. The commenter was talking about army movements, units which actually collide with each other.
- leloctai 2y ago
  The blog is interesting, but it is about sc1. Pathfinding in sc1 is so terrible that moving units where you want is part of what's make one a pro player.
symmetricsaurus 2y ago
Apparently smart triangulation of the game world, A*, plus boids pretty much. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014514/AI-Navigation-It-s-Not https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014514/AI-Navigation-It-s-Not

miiiiiike 2y ago

What’s amazing about Blizzard is that they got me so early that I saw Warhammer Fantasy and 40K as the store brands until sometime in my twenties.

barmstrong 2y ago

Someone should make a documentary about the history of StarCraft and where it's going next I also wish we saw more AI leagues and gameplay One of the best games of all time.

2Pacalypse- 2y ago

One less talked about thing when discussing StarCraft, that might be more pertinent to HN audience, is that this game was almost endlessly hackable. And I mean that in the truest sense of that word. Many a careers were launched by playing around with OllyDbg and learning to reverse engineer code all so you could create an awesome plugin [0] for the community. Which brings me to my next point, which is that the community aspect of StarCraft is a huge part of why it remained popular for so long. As previously mentioned, there were hackers and programmers developing awesome tools that helped the scene, but also there were map makers which were essential in keeping the game balanced. One little known fact about StarCraft is that the last balance patch released by Blizzard was in 2001, at the early beginnings of the pro scene. After that, the game was kept fresh and balanced by community map makers. Combine that with people who created websites where you could follow news about Korean pro scene (TeamLiquid has its roots here), talk with other people about StarCraft, and other people who organized tournaments and did everything else; and you get a formula which almost ensures the longetivity of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people playing and following this game in 20 years time. I know I'll be one of them. [0] - https://github.com/TheEngineeringBay/Awesome-Broodwar-Resources https://github.com/TheEngineeringBay/Awesome-Broodwar-Resour...

wes-k 2y ago
SCUMS! (StarCraft Use Map Settings). These maps provided a wide array of games and I believe popularized or gave birth to a few. I remember tower defense, level up games where you and the other players explore the map and gain upgrades, a predator game where one player is chosen randomly to be the killer in a horror style hunt. Imagine, each map, possibly an entire new game, sometimes being discovered for the first time together with strangers. Such a fun and amazing time!
rvba 2y ago
The game also had custom maps that allowed for sandboxed programming / scripting. A lot of very clever custom maps ("use map settings" / UMS) were made. MOBA genere spawned from a Starcraft custom map called Aeon of strife. Starcraft also had a map called "the unknown" which is basically Among Us - made years ago. There were "turret defense" maps, RPG maps, maps where you controlled one unit and tried to dodge things (bound maps) and many other maps that just changed the balance. In the golden times players didnt have to play the cutthroat 1:1 all the timr - you could spend days playing custom maps (archives have tens of thousands of them), custom campaigns, modes with more players like 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4, or even 8 player everyone for themself. Apart from "difficult" maps, there was a whole community playing maps with (nearly) unlimited resources - "fastest maps" and "big game hunters" (BGH). Those maps were easier so no "ladder anxiety" by having to play the best all the time. Starcraft 1 gave a lot of freedom to have fun. You didnt have to participate in the incredibly difficult duels. You could play a custom map, or some 3v3 with your friends - where overall skill level was lower, but fun level was high. Killing custom maps is in my opiniin one of the reasons why Starcraft 2 failed. Blizzard wanted to capitalize on them, but didnt know how. In Starcraft Brood War there was this game list - you could select UMS mode and pick from probably 100 open games. In Starcraft 2 you could only play what blizzard wanted you to play. I guess Blizzard was unhappy that Warcraft 3 spawned the whole DOTA game - which was also a custom map. Regarding hacking - many people learned java writing bots for Diablo 2.

fenesiistvan 2y ago

I used to play Starcraft a lot, but i don't know anything about mods, extensions, multiplayer, etc. From where can I download the best current release (official or not, i don't care) + maybe some extra such as better/HD textures? Is there any easy path to follow?

neogodless 2y ago
I cannot tell from your comment if you're aware of StarCraft: Remastered - it's $15, includes original/Brood Wars, and has modernized skin, but plays identically (and is compatible with) the original. $15 USD. https://starcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/ https://starcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/
- zzlk 2y ago
  to be clear because this is often a point of confusion (I believe it was done intentionally to be confusing but I digress). The remastered client is actually free, the HD skin (and ladder play) is $15. So you can play online with custom maps and the campaign and so on for free.

stared 2y ago

There is a lively stage of SC2 YouTubers, be they commentators (like LowkoTV) or gammers. Harstem is dark and edgy, including his iconic series "Is it IMBA or do I suck?". At the same time, it is lovely to watch challenges by MaNa and uThermal - especially on how much fun they have, regardless of whether they are winning. Also, it is still interesting to see the diversity of grandmasters' personal play styles. In a mature game, one would expect it to converge to a single "optimal" playstyle. Yet, even after the dust of a new balance patch settles, it is impressive. And for a reminder, SC2: Legacy of the Void is over 8 years old.

FrustratedMonky 2y ago

Really hoping that Microsoft buying Blizzard, might lead to a resurgence in interest and development, along the lines of the resources put into Age of Empires.

_fat_santa 2y ago

I have such fond memories of the original Starcraft. When I was like 7 or 8, my parents got a computer for the first time (this was ~2004) and installed Starcraft on it. We still didn't have internet so all I got was the single player aspect but I loved it and must have dumped close to 100 hours playing it over the next 2 years or so. After that I stopped playing Starcraft but when I was in high school I picked it up again and started playing online. The regular matches were cool but the coolest matches were "custom scenarios", my favorite being "mouse hunt". It was a scenario where one team had the weakest players and the other team had the strongest players but the weak team could create barriers that the strong team couldn't destroy. From there the small team would slowly build up and defeat the stronger team or the strong team would wipe everyone out before they could. It's been years since I played the OG Starcraft but I think I'll be picking it up again soon. It's just such a damn good game and it's really stood the test of time where even if you pick it up today it doesn't feel like a dated game, Blizzard made a truly timeless game with Starcraft and that's not an easy thing to do. Never played Starcraft II but from what I heard they mostly kept to the original formula and many folks love that game.

josh2600 2y ago
My pops wouldn’t let us play on the internet at first so my brother played Warcraft and StarCraft using AppleTalk. I remember the only cable we had barely reached between the two computers so we had it hanging tight and if someone tripped over the cable we’d disconnect and have to start over.

throw156754228 2y ago

I just want to go play a game of broodwar now on battlenet. Guessing this isn't possible?

vitaflo 2y ago
Of course it’s possible. Just buy SC Remastered and get online.

flarco 2y ago

Who else still listens to the StarCraft music OST? I listen to it a few times a year and get in the zone.

kchr 2y ago
I had the Terran 1 theme as my cell phone ringtone for a long time :-)

jabedude 2y ago

I will never understand how Starcraft II failed

einpoklum 2y ago

> Starcraft was a superb game by any standard, the most tactically intricate, balanced, and polished RTS to date I'd say M.A.X. was no less tactically intricate - albeit through infinite configurability of things.

ayakang31415 2y ago

This game brings me so much nostalgia. I used to play SC when I was a middle school student from 2000 to 2002. I was so good at the game that around my age group I was probably the best in Seoul. I also participated at a pro tournament (ongamenet I believe), but lost to NaDa during the knockout stage. Then I moved to the states so I stopped playing.

zzlk 2y ago

I see many people in the comments nostalgically talking about the custom mapping scene and how it got them into programming. The same is true for me, so I think here is a good place to plug my starcraft custom map archive website [0]. In 2020 because of the pandemic StarCraft enjoyed a surge of popularity again, I went looking for some custom maps that I remembered from the early 2000s but I couldn't find them. The existing websites at the time were not solving the problem for me so I set out to solve it myself. The website is a passion project for me, I don't want it to generate any revenue. It's been a fun ride and it's now easily the largest map archive that has ever existed. I think eventually I'll make a show HN post about it when I implement a few more cool features, but that will have to be for a later date. [0] https://scmscx.com https://scmscx.com

coryfklein 2y ago

Competitive StarCraft (and it's successor) is very much alive still today! I recommend checking out sc2casts's best-of-year lists[0] for each year where you can find a selection of what ends up being the most "interesting" matches played throughout the year. These can range from games that explore a new aspect of the meta, to nail-biting matches where the apparent loser makes an unbelievable comeback, to the career-making game of an upstart unseating the king. (I have no affiliation whatsoever with sc2casts.) [0] https://sc2casts.com/best-of-2023/ https://sc2casts.com/best-of-2023/

starcraftgamer 2y ago

Long time HN lurker, decided to make an account because I have some knowledge about this. I think there are two interesting things the article misses around PC bangs: 1. StarCraft could run on a potato. The PCs in these cafes were not always the most modern, and the lack of system requirements was a big boon to StarCraft taking off. This is also why League of Legends became very popular in South Korea. 2. Ironically, piracy. The article mentions that cafes bought copies of StarCraft to install on their PCs. This isn't quite correct, in practice a single CD key would be used to install StarCraft on all PCs in the cafe. StarCraft Brood War in Korea is alive and well. It's had a recent resurgence and is currently the most watched game on their popular local streaming service Afreeca (essentially Korean Twitch.tv).