A long-rumoredStarCraft remaster for computers was finally unveiled on Saturday by Blizzard Entertainment, set for launch in 'summer 2017.' No pricing info was announced, but Blizzard has confirmed quite a few other details about the 4K-friendly release.
You may be a Call of Duty guy, running FPS games all day, or you may be a Starcraft 2 kind of strategy guy. Or maybe an MMORPG WoW type of person, organising raids with fellow nerds - but Minecraft is the kind of game which brings lovers of all genres together in one experience. StarCraft®: Remastered upgrades the essential sci-fi strategy experience from beginning to end. Welcome back to the original game and its award-winning expansion, StarCraft: Brood War. We’ve remastered our units, buildings, and environments, improved game audio, and broadened our supported resolutions.
Korhal IV (often simply referred to as Korhal) is the fourth planet in the Korhal system.1 1 Planetology 2 History 2.1 Confederate Colony 2.2 The Rebellion of Korhal 2.3 The Dominion 2.4 The Brood War 2.5 Reconstruction 2.6 Media Blitz 2.7 The Zerg Invasion 2.8 A New War 2.9 Reconstruction 3 Known Locations 3.1 Establishments 3.2 Installations 3.3 Landforms 3.4 Regions 3.5 Settlements 3.6. 1 Patch 1.18.7 1.1 Specific Changes & Improvements 1.2 Bug Fixes 2 Patch 1.18.0 2.1 Feature Changes 2.2 Bug Fixes 2.3 Known Issues Mouse sensitivity expanded from 10 to 20 available settings Mouse sensitivity can be turned off to utilize system settings Mouse sensitivity now displays the delta's percentage Commands issued immediately before changing control groups no longer apply to the new.
For one, it will be preceded by a patch to the 19-year-old StarCraft: Brood War client, and this new 1.18a client will reportedly not change the mechanics of the game. To prove that out, this patched version will still be able to connect to players using the existing 1.16 patch (which came out all the way back in 2009). Among other tweaks, like better compatibility with newer versions of Windows, the new patch will include two important updates: the ability to connect to and play against owners of the upcoming remastered version, and the change to a wholly free product. Once the patch goes live, the original StarCraft Anthology will be free-as-in-beer to download and play in both single- and multiplayer modes.
Blizzard fed the patch's details to the community site TeamLiquid, and these indicate that the patch (and the associated price change) will launch first for Windows players on March 30.
AdvertisementIf you pay for the remaster, which will launch on both Mac and PC, you'll get the exact same game logic and content as the original game, only with completely redrawn 2D graphics designed to scale for 4K resolutions and widescreen ratios. Whether the redrawn art will be your cup of tea is another question; early footage includes some monsters, ships, and buildings that look a little odd when directly compared to the original sprites. The remaster will also fully retouch the assets of the game's six campaigns, complete with new 'comic book' intro panels and re-recorded dialogue.
Preview videos advertise the ability to zoom heavily into the new 2D sprites and also far out to view the entire battlefield, but it's unclear whether this zooming will be allowed in online play. We'll have to wait for Blizzard to show us more footage, which we hope will also clear up whether these redrawn assets are ultimately the right fit.
| StarCraft: Remastered | |
| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Platforms | Microsoft Windows, macOS |
| Release | |
| Latest release | |
| Genre(s) | |
| Mode(s) | Single player. multiplayer |
| Chronology | |
|---|---|
- 'Infinite fronts, infinite enemies.' — Tagline[1]
StarCraft: Remastered (SCR) is a real-time strategy (RTS) computer game and remake of the 1998 game StarCraft and its expansion StarCraft: Brood War. It is designed to emulate the old gameplay with updated visuals, online support for the new Blizzard Battle.net and additional gameplay support features.[1] It was released on August 14th, 2017.[2] Those who pre-ordered the game received bonus skins for the game, along with bonus portraits for StarCraft II, and access to Stukov in Co-op Missions.[2] With the release, Korea was the only region to receive a physical collector's box.
Overview
StarCraft: Remastered is a remake of the best-selling StarCraft computer game. It maintains the balance of 1.18 for Brood War, as well as run in the old gameplay engine. Some bug fixes are present, such as the sprite limitations preventing valkyries and carriers from shooting, but otherwise bugs that were molded into features are maintained, and pathing will remain the same as in the original game.[3] The game requires the battle.net app to launch.[4]
The game features updated visuals, some polished versions of the old sprites, some built from the ground up based off of the ideas of the original artists and concept art. The campaign is present as well, with comic-style interludes and briefings between[5] and during missions.[6] The comics replace segments of the original game where green text was used on a black screen to convey narrative. The briefings from the original game are retained, but will receive added visual effects.[4] Illustrated segments within missions will vary in depiction, ranging from a wide view of the environment to a close-up of a character's face.[6] Classic cinematics are rendered in 1080p, and gameplay will have 4k resolution. Dialogue and audio are revised,[5] the audio sample rate increased to 44kHz.[7] Within the game, players can toggle between 4K resolution and the original's graphics settings for the visual effects[8] by hitting the 'F5' key. Hitting the 'F7' key can toggle environmental effects. The spectator mode will be updated, allowing observers to zoom up and down from the battlefield. StarEdit will be accessible in a later patch.[4]
Support for the game includes online matchmaking, an APM counter, anti-hack support, LAN support, and new chat channel functionality along with legacy chat channel and custom game lobbies. Remastered is localized in 13 languages: English, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (LatAm), Spanish (European), Polish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese.[5] Hotkeys are rebindable, though control groups and F keys are not.[9]
Classic StarCraft accounts can be to be paired over to StarCraft: Remastered accounts. Unlike in StarCraft, the account will be paired forever and not be removed after 90 days.[3] Profiles are enhanced to track previous matches, display replays, show statistics and chat channels. In addition, profiles contain unlockable portraits.[10] There is a leaderboard to track total points, wins, losses and disconnects. At launch this leaderboard will only track statistics of friends, but will expand to global standings as the matchmaker is honed.[10]
Development
StarCraft: Remastered was made in response to the continued community surrounding StarCraft: Brood War even years after the release of StarCraft II. Development of the game was done for 18 months. StarCraft professional players were brought in to give their feedback, and they were resoundingly positive. The goal of the game was to not change the gameplay that made the professional scene what it was, but to also provide modern features to the classic game.[3] 'StarCraft hubs' were visited by the developers as well, in order to get fan feedback. Likewise, the 'Wild West' atmosphere of the original was sought to be preserved.[8] An early directive was to preserve the gameplay of the original 'at all costs.' The community was adamant that various issues remain untouched and even 'broken' in any remaster, with the game's 'automatic pathfinding' cited as the biggest example.[4] Another issue was that the original StarCraft was beginning to have issues running on modern day operating systems.[11]
The game faced issues in regards to the recovery of old assets. Some of the game's code was still in Blizzard's hands due to the patches that had been added to the original StarCraft over the years. Samwise Didier had kept his concept art from work on the original game, but in-game art was missing, as were the original cinematics. However, someone within Blizzard had kept the original cinematics. As such, the original game's CG cinematics were re-processed. However, the in-game art assets were rebuilt from the ground up[4] (it has also been stated that the assets had to be taken off the disc itself).[12]Brian Sousa was brought on to be the art lead, as he had worked on the original game.[11]Lemonsky Studio contributed artwork for the project.[13] The outsourcing was an exception (as Blizzard does most of its art in-house), but was required due to the small size of the Classic Games team.[12]
The unit silhouettes were maintained because the developers wanted players to be able to immediately recognize them. Initially, there was negative reception among playtesters to the HD models. Visual effects were similarly given an overhaul. The original intent was to mimic the original effects as closely as possible, but it was discovered that the original effects weren't that impressive by modern standards. The original game effectively had to be reverse engineered, in order to extract the sprites.[8] However, redoing any of the original's aesthetics was forbidden.[7] The high templar had its eyes changed from red to blue in the remaster, but fan backlash was so extreme that the change was reverted.[14]
Currently 2,381 audio files are present in the game. Some of the sounds are entirely new, per the game's new language support. Others were retrieved from the original, and amplified using modern sound systems. In regards to sound mastering, guidelines were set in place: no tweaks would be made to just a few race, unit or scene sounds at a time. Every change should be made to groups of related sounds in unison. The sound team working on the project developed a technique to heighten the fidelity of the original sound files to 44 kHz without radically changing the sound mix. Another reason for not changing the sound was that the distinct sounds of the original act as cues for various units/structures.[7]
As of July 2017, there are no plans for a console version.[14] 2v2 and 3v3 matchmaking is intended to be implemented at a later date.[12] Ultima oil pump manual.
Videos
Gallery
Announcement banner
References
- ↑ 1.01.1StarCraft: Remastered. Blizzard Entertainment (2017-03-26). Retrieved on 2017-11-14.
- ↑ 2.02.1StarCraft: Remastered Arrives August 14. Blizzplanet (2017-06-29). Retrieved on 2017-11-14.
- ↑ 3.03.13.2StarCraft: Remastered - An in-depth interview with producer Pete Stilwell. Yahoo eSports (2017-03-26). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 4.04.14.24.34.4StarCraft Remastered devs unveil price, explain how much is being rebuilt. Ars Technica (2017-06-30). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 5.05.15.2An interview with the Devs of StarCraft: Remastered (2017-03-26). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 6.06.1An interview with the Devs of StarCraft: Remastered. Team Liquid (2017-03-26). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 7.07.17.2The Sounds of Koprulu. Blizzard Entertainment (2017-05-12). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 8.08.18.2Behind the Scenes of StarCraft: Remastered. Blizzard Entertainment (2017-05-04). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑Feature Preview: Hotkeys. Blizzard Entertainment (2017-05-26). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 10.010.1Feature Preview: Profiles. Blizzard Entertainment (2017-05-26). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 11.011.1On StarCraft Remastered's Transformation And Why There Isn't A Console Port. GameSpot (2017-08-19). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 12.012.112.2Blizzard Entertainment 2017-11-04. BlizzCon 2017: Developer Interview with Matt Morris, Lead Designer Classic Games. YouTube. Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑Zeogd. Art Station. Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
- ↑ 14.014.1Blizzard Talks StarCraft Remastered, And Why It Deserves A Re-release After 20 Years. GameSpot (2017-07-11). Retrieved on 2017-12-14.
Starcraft Remastered Trailer
See also
External links
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Starcraft 2 Vs Starcraft Remastered