5 ms·
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.cod
by 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 agoIt 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 agoit 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 agoExactly, 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 agoI 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.
- reginald78 2y agoThis was my opinion at the time as well. First generation 3D games looked inferior to the previous 2D pixel art and 2.5D shooters of the time. The polygon counts were just to low. They could handle perspectives better and had more complex lighting and by the second generation they were already the way forward, but they had a crude first effort feel and required additional hardware to really shine against their predecessors graphically. I still feel a lot of games (particularly strategy games) lose something going 3D but maybe that is just nostalgia talking. I never could quite getting to 3D RTS games.
- Sakos 2y agoThat's not 100% true. The pathfinding is atrociously bad in SC1, which is usually attributed to how they took the WC engine and made it isometric, but I assume was partly also due to performance. Whenever I go back to play it, that's the one thing that frustrates me every time when playing the campaign.
- chii 2y agoThis sort of "atrociousness" is also why it made the competitive scene work, because it allows skills to show through. If you select-all, attack, the pathing will cause you to lose the fight against someone micro-ing the units.
- Sakos 2y agoI don't disagree, but when I'm playing the campaign or custom maps, I'm not too worried about skill expression and micromanaging these brain-dead units is not all that fun.
- 29athrowaway 2y agoSC1 is a game where the player makes a very significant different in the outcome. And where the difference in skill level are huge.
- KeplerBoy 2y agoIs there any game which is proportional more fun for the computational resources it uses compared to late '90s games? Some things were basically perfected back then.
- jonathanlydall 2y agoIt technically ran on a 486, but was painfully slow. IIRC the box stated 100MHz Pentium minimum, but we found for LAN sessions that you really wanted a 200MHz MMX CPU to never suffer slowdown.
- marsRoverDev 2y agoHe's in this thread
- herodoturtle 2y agoThank you for this link. I'm busy reading through the blog and there are some incredible programming insights in there. Highly recommended.