
StarCraft Remastered - alxmdev
https://starcraft.com/en-us/
======
niftich
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
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
HoTS uses a different engine and completely new netcode to SC2.

~~~
ferdbold
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
>the team ran into technical roadblocks

The "technical roadblocks" were no easy way to monetize it as a map.

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rublev
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
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.

~~~
ido
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).

~~~
ferentchak
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.

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richdougherty
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...](http://hanselminutes.com/568/forgotten-empires-amazing-games-age-of-
empires-is-back-with-bert-beeckman)

I played a lot of AoE II and StarCraft back in the day.

~~~
jonbaer
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.

~~~
louhike
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.

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shiado
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)

~~~
rhaps0dy
Is it more demanding than Starcraft 2 or Starcraft without expansions? Why?

~~~
dkns
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.

------
pfarnsworth
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
I've heard that TA had really great and fun mods. Any anecdotes of that you
might be familiar with?

~~~
CydeWeys
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.

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gspetr
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.

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Waterluvian
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"

~~~
tenpies
> 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.

~~~
kirrent
Interestingly, that's apparently because they're keeping the old gameplay
code. That's great to hear because units like the Reaver and Dragoons are only
balanced because of their issues.

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cwyers
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.

~~~
Camillo
In the example on the page, I think the Zerg spike-things (forgot what they're
called) stand out. In the remastered version they are a bit too shiny, and
look like they're just sitting on the creep, which makes them look more like
plastic miniatures. In the old version they appear grimier, and they look more
like they're growing out of the creep.

~~~
lloeki
An effect somehow related to the Donkey Kong shots at the middle of this
article[0], where being "too crisp" breaks the "blend" between the sprites and
the background.

[0]: [http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.fr/2015/03/the-case-for-
comp...](http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.fr/2015/03/the-case-for-
composite.html)

------
terrywang
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 ;-)

------
tomc1985
Total Annihilation was waaay better! :)

~~~
TulliusCicero
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
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...)

~~~
TulliusCicero
There's a certain type of fun that comes from experimenting and figuring
things out and wacky times. And there's a certain type of fun that comes from
mastery of a well-designed system.

------
ericzawo
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
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
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

------
orionblastar
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.

~~~
DavidNielsen
There's also a somewhat incomplete reimplementation in C#

[https://github.com/toshok/scsharp](https://github.com/toshok/scsharp)

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jshmrsn
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).

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cik2e
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
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.

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

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

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

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melling
earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13960409)

~~~
3131s
For some reason this thread disappeared suddenly despite having many upvotes
and quality comments. What happened mods?

~~~
dang
That's an announcement of an announcement. Those are off topic.

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

------
blackguardx
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.

~~~
TulliusCicero
They're releasing the original (sans graphics improvements) as completely free
soon.

~~~
joshstrange
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
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-v...](http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/brood-
war/520460-starcraft-v118a-patch-notes-preparation-for-scr)

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edoceo
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
I never saw an HTML5 version of SC. I stopped playing long ago though by the
time WoW came out.

~~~
desdiv
[http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/](http://www.nvhae.com/starcraft/)

[https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js](https://github.com/gloomyson/SC_Js)

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jimyl
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
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.

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keithwhor
'Member StarCraft? 'Member the Matrix? I 'member.

(This game was a huge part of my childhood. Love it.)

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cocochanel
I want a Warcraft III Remastered!

~~~
elcapitan
And Warcraft II remastered!

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

~~~
bobbles
It just leads to the starcraft website

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imjustsaying
Never got into Starcraft, Warcraft II on the other hand

~~~
wapz
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
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.

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trothamel
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
It is a QR code! I just scanned it and it had a url..
[http://starcraft.com](http://starcraft.com).

~~~
richdougherty
:( I'd hoped that by the time we're flying around the galaxy in spaceships we
would have moved from HTTP to HTTPS.

~~~
Sunset
Goliaths are derpy as fuck because they are running on node.js

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chj
Hope it won't take years.

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akirayamaoka
Blur. Blur is everywhere.

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mmgutz
When? I want to buy NOW!

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

~~~
atune
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
I wonder if we'll get cutscenes to replace the explanatory text screens and
briefings.

~~~
duskwuff
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.

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cykr0n
3v3 ZC No Rules Xperts

See you soon...

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jlebrech
how much is it?

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justicezyx
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.

