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Once upon a time, there was a gaming magazine called Computer Gaming World. Unfortunately, this magazine shut down in the mid 2000s, but there exists a nice website with scans of almost all the issues. Considering that CGW is no longer in print, I assume that this website is quite legal, though mods can take down this post if it isn't
Anyways, a few issues from 1997 and 1998 have previews and a review of the original vanilla Starcraft. The info they contain is actually quite interesting, and the game being described in the previews is greatly different from the game that we play today.
Previews:
May 1997, page 56
November 1997, page 150
Review:
July 1998, page 168
Some interesting info in there. Did you know that:
- The scenario editor was supposed to have a voice recorder.
- Terran was supposed to use "alien wreckage" as a secondary source of resources.
- Zerg units increase in size and strength as they age. For example, the Hydralisk would start with 120 HP but would add one HP every few seconds until it maxed out at 130 HP.
- Grouped Zealots might be able to channel all their energies into one of their number, giving that unit bonus attributes.
- Units were supposed to have a light radius, so that you could see a ship's headlights before actually being able to see the ship.
- There were plans for weather effects, like periodic storms, fog, and even nebulae in space combat/
- Combat debris affects gameplay. Debris will drift off into space, and ground-based combat will result in persistent debris that impedes movement.
- There were supposed to be more robust alliance options that allowed allies to trade resources and units. There was also supposed to be a handicapping feature.
- Planned were neutral outposts to defend and capture, pirates to fight, and AI opponents with whom you can negotiate. (Warcraft 3?)
- Every unit was supposed to have a one-item inventory, and you could get these power-up items from alien wreckage scattered around the map. Items are dropped when the owner dies.
- There was supposed to be a hotkey that cycles through all your Barracks?
- Zerg could enter gas mines directly without an Extractor, but they needed to "infest" minerals to harvest.
- Battle.net was supposed to provide support for clans and handicapping.
Very interesting stuff in there. The other games covered in the magazine are also quite cool. Vintage stuff like Age of Empires and Fallout are in there, as well as previews and reviews for scores of RTS games long forgotten. It's a shame that we live in a day and age where hardly anyone is brave enough to develop a traditional RTS with the Starcraft 2 juggernaut still strong in the market, and most of the major franchises like Age of Empries and Command and Conquer are in shambles.
Who knows what would've happened to Starcraft had all these plans gone through. With stuff like unit inventories and neutral outposts and space pirates, it sounded like an early version of Warcraft 3, but in space. Considering that the previews were done one year before the game's release, perhaps a lot of the features were cut due to time constraints, though many did show up later in WC3. The previewed Starcraft sounded like a really cool RTS, and I wish I could play the full, original vision of Starcraft just to see what it's like compared to the ESPORTS kings that we have in Brood War and Starcraft 2.
 
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Im happy that most of that stuff was cut.
specifically
•Planned were neutral outposts to defend and capture, pirates to fight, and AI opponents with whom you can negotiate. (Warcraft 3?)
But if was for single player i wouldnt have cared.
I dont like the soud of this either
•Terran was supposed to use "alien wreckage" as a secondary source of resources.
sometimes simpler is better.
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Sounds pretty damn cool, making SC with such extreme diversity. However, I see two reasons why they didn't implement all these. The first is balance. If you add stuff like alien wreckage, combat debris etc, balancing would be extremely difficult. A third resource accessible only to terran? The debris could make stupid things happen. Imagine moving out your army, going back to look at your base. Then, an asteroid lands on your army. gg.
The second, more important reason, is processing power. I don't know if developments in programming were at a level to code for all these fancy stuff. More importantly, the system requirements would skyrocket. Remember that in 1998, computer processing power was a fraction of what it is today. SC would have been inaccessible to everyone except the people who had vastly better computers.
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On April 26 2012 00:47 iamperfection wrote:
Im happy that most of that stuff was cut.
specifically
•Planned were neutral outposts to defend and capture, pirates to fight, and AI opponents with whom you can negotiate. (Warcraft 3?)
But if was for single player i wouldnt have cared.
I dont like the soud of this either
•Terran was supposed to use "alien wreckage" as a secondary source of resources.
sometimes simpler is better.
why? sc was innovative but this wouldve made it one ov the most inovvative games of all time. of all time!
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Seems like most of those ideas were scrapped at the time, but kept for a later date (WC3 as you said). A lot of those features could be cool in single player, but yeah for multiplayer at that time, I don't think it would have been viable to implement those features (due to both technical limitations and balance issues).
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On April 26 2012 00:53 Heh_ wrote:
Sounds pretty damn cool, making SC with such extreme diversity. However, I see two reasons why they didn't implement all these. The first is balance. If you add stuff like alien wreckage, combat debris etc, balancing would be extremely difficult. A third resource accessible only to terran? The debris could make stupid things happen. Imagine moving out your army, going back to look at your base. Then, an asteroid lands on your army. gg.
The second, more important reason, is processing power. I don't know if developments in programming were at a level to code for all these fancy stuff. More importantly, the system requirements would skyrocket. Remember that in 1998, computer processing power was a fraction of what it is today. SC would have been inaccessible to everyone except the people who had vastly better computers.
Well, I don't think balance would be that much of an issue. This was way before anyone could even entertain the thought of an RTS becoming an esport, so I don't think anyone back then would be that concerned with finely tuning balance to the perfect level. Heck, vanilla Starcraft 1.0 was pretty unbalanced, and I bet the beta was much, much worse in terms of balance.
Also, the May 1997 preview article did say that there wouldn't be any harmful environmental effects like earthquakes or meteor showers. Just regular weather effects that look cool.
But I do agree with the system requirements part. Tiberium Sun went through a lengthy development process with a fancy voxel engine and a ton of features that ended up being cut, and it was criticized for being very unoptimized and running very slowly on even the best computers of the time. Also, I don't trust the original Blizzard programmers for being very elegant, as Starcraft 1's AI pathing is terrible (Dragoons lolol) and there were a ton of glitches that were fixed with subsequent patches.
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Quick correction. The review is on page 168, not 158.
Thanks for posting these! It's really cool!
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is awesome32263 Posts
It sounds awesome. Besides competitiveness, I really like most of the ideas.
Neutral camps are a different mentality, but they are pretty cool. W3 was a good game, different from BW, not like when people say "SC2 is a different game from BW", actually different. I think W3 succeeded in it's own niche (not taking into account Dota), and I would have loved to play and learn the early games of it, if I wasn't so hooked to BW.
I wonder what tidbits we could get from the SC2 development in 7-8 years. Maybe Blizzard isn't so dumb nowadays after all, and the problem is just not all the good ideas get through...
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is awesome32263 Posts
I just read the issue with SC's review.
Flipping those pages is so saddening. The amount of good games you could find. The comparison with today's games is a joke.
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On April 26 2012 01:55 IntoTheWow wrote:
I just read the issue with SC's review.
Flipping those pages is so saddening. The amount of good games you could find. The comparison with today's games is a joke.
Page 34 of that issue is hilarious.
"Blizzard accused of email snooping- privacy suit ensues."
lmao
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I remember those issues, that is a very weird feeling. My roommate at the time was a subscriber to CGW and I would steal his magazines for reading material and to look at all the pictures of games I couldn't afford.
I actually cut up a bunch of the artwork (after asking him) from the SC article and used it as cubical art at my job. At which point an older lady complained that I had "demons and stuff" on my cubicle and I was asked to remove the cutouts -_-
Memories...
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On April 26 2012 00:59 OpticalShot wrote:
Seems like most of those ideas were scrapped at the time, but kept for a later date (WC3 as you said). A lot of those features could be cool in single player, but yeah for multiplayer at that time, I don't think it would have been viable to implement those features (due to both technical limitations and balance issues).
But wait a minute. Didnt they say the same thing about Half-Life?
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Those look like some great ideas, but I could see how they'd be weeded out as creating difficulty. combat creating debris would be particularly annoying from a programming standpoint, floating debris could obscure units which could lead to all sorts of potentially unwanted behaviour. I'm glad they tested as throughly as they did, but game developers these days could find a way to do that stuff in interesting ways, and should!
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On April 26 2012 03:45 UltimateHurl wrote:
Those look like some great ideas, but I could see how they'd be weeded out as creating difficulty. combat creating debris would be particularly annoying from a programming standpoint, floating debris could obscure units which could lead to all sorts of potentially unwanted behaviour. I'm glad they tested as throughly as they did, but game developers these days could find a way to do that stuff in interesting ways, and should!
Worked in Total Annihilation wheres it a big part of strategy, also excellent game.
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EPT
