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51409 Posts
Blizzard Absorbs Activision Studio After Dismantling Classic Games Team
Video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. took another step in consolidating control over division Blizzard Entertainment, which once took pride in its autonomy, by shifting a 200-person design studio to its ranks.
The studio, Vicarious Visions, had been a subsidiary of Activision since 2005 and worked on franchises like Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot and Tony Hawk. It will now focus entirely on Blizzard’s franchises, including Diablo, instead of making its own games. Former Vicarious Visions studio head Jennifer Oneal will take a seat on Blizzard's leadership team, reporting directly to the president.
The news, reported by GamesIndustry.biz, arrived just a few weeks after Blizzard quietly dismantled one of its internal development teams, according to people familiar with the company.
More details here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-22/blizzard-absorbs-activision-studio-after-dismantling-classic-games-team
Safe to say that further development on both SC:R and WC3:R won't be happening anymore.
Thankfully for WC3:R there is the W3Champions team implementing ladder, host servers etc and with SC:R it looks like ShieldBattery has quietly revived itself .
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I agree. I think 1.23.x is probably the end of the road for SC:R, and the only updates will be ladder map updates and if any gamebreaking bugs show up.
So anyone who is still holding out that Blizzard will add 2v2 matchmaking & ladder. Give it up. No one left to keep the promises.
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The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations.
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Just the final nail in the coffin.
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Well this is terrible news, although I am really excited to play more ShieldBattery.... FULL SCREEN 2D YES
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No surprise at this point. Just confirmation of what most of us already thought.
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tec27 and 2pac the saviors we need but don't deserve
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Honestly disgraceful to outsource the classic titles which were crucial to Blizzard's success. Shame.
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Yeah, I thought we already knew a lot of this news? Hmm. Well, VV working on remakes with the HotS team was what I wanted all along, but it's a shame how other elements are getting dissolved and scrambled up. Them slowing production on Diablo 4 to work with VV to make a Diablo 2 Remaster/Remake makes sense, since the assumption was D4 was still very early in development with core systems designs being a long ways from starting actual development and they know they're overdue to give people what everyone knows they want.
Does the article say anything more about what really happened, in more detail, with War3:R? I thought the Classic Games team only ended up making orders for art assets from a bunch of scattered external studios then pasting all the pieces together because of terrible management, and that Team 1 and the rest of Classic Games were working on other things before getting combined (collectively still spread too thin between HotS, SC2, SC:R, then War3:R and possibly something else). It's still so eye-roll-inducing how well the process for Crash and Spyro remakes went even though they did use many freelancers and studios, then apparently again with a brand new Crash 4, and Blizz was totally incapable of following that blueprint or was somehow totally unaware of the other side of their company.
Eh, whatever. I just feel bad for people working there as artists, programmers, small team leads and managers who have cool visions and high goals and just want to make cool games but get thrown around so much now at Blizz, and I assume Activision. VV getting taken away from more Tony Hawk remakes and potential new games might not doom that franchise, I feel that Killer Instinct 2013 with Double Helix and Iron Galaxy is a good example of how a good team with proper direction and management can pick up and carry a torch to victory. They even managed to do a great job with a limited budget for the base game, subsequent seasons, and even overcame the music production moving from Mick Gordon to Celldweller and Atlas Plug for the last season.
Lessons to learn for everyone else, hopefully. D4 has so much potential and yet I'm only planning on drooling over a few pieces of art here and there and otherwise not paying attention to anything else until it gets released at some point in the next five years.
*Might as well add: I couldn't help but imagine what TB and Incontrol would be saying about all this, and maybe how excited they might be for other studios starting up. Sigh...
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50090 Posts
On January 23 2021 10:58 Jonoman92 wrote:
tec27 and 2pac the saviors we need but don't deserve
you really have to stress the don't deserve part.
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So... who wants to play some on Shield Battery? I want to feel the amazing Latency again and play full screen 2D.... it is like a dream come true after years and years of lag instead of being able to use this or ChaosLauncher again.
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Hype for never-ending ladder season 8
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On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations.
I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right?
The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster.
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On January 23 2021 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations. I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right? The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster.
Still missing important stuff that was in the original game AFAIK (any ladder first and foremost, the community has produced their own ladder system but Blizzard's is still completely missing). Certainly I don't think the game would have deserved a 0.6/10 on its own merits, but Blizzard was asking (forcing?) people to pay for the game a second time, so it should *at least* provide all the stuff it had before that point.
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We have managed without their help for so long, so I think we will still be able to manage after the dissolution.
FIGHTING!
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On January 23 2021 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations. I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right? The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster.
Nobody in the competitive scene plays on "Reforged" graphics.
95% of work was done by the community after Bli$$ard basically destroyed the game (still no "official" ladder support).
I just really wish they have left it alone, the community will manage like they always did.
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On January 23 2021 17:01 tec27 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2021 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations. I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right? The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster. Still missing important stuff that was in the original game AFAIK (any ladder first and foremost, the community has produced their own ladder system but Blizzard's is still completely missing). Certainly I don't think the game would have deserved a 0.6/10 on its own merits, but Blizzard was asking (forcing?) people to pay for the game a second time, so it should *at least* provide all the stuff it had before that point.
When can we expect more promotion / more announcements about Shield Battery? Thanks for all of your hard work.
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South Korea2105 Posts
didnt they also announce theyre absorbing the studio responsible for tony hawk with rumours of a remastered version of diablo 2 surfacing again?
mb theyre restructuring i dunno
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so basicaly they fucked wc3, made some cash and then abandoned it...
W3Champions is nice and they are heroes of the scene. But I can't believe Blizzard (Activision) is just gonna leave the game without a ladder and all the other missing features.
Wc3 reforged without W3C is 10 times worse than TFT was and it does not only miss old features, but almost nothing new is in the game. No extra skins apart fromt the preorder skins, no ingame hotkeys etc... just worse graphics (at least for multiplayer).
Thankfully the hardcore scene will mange fine without Blizzard. But the fact that they forced us to pay for that bullshit again (since the original TFT was taken down) and just made everything worse, is honestly a crime.
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On January 23 2021 18:54 TelecoM wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2021 17:01 tec27 wrote:On January 23 2021 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations. I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right? The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster. Still missing important stuff that was in the original game AFAIK (any ladder first and foremost, the community has produced their own ladder system but Blizzard's is still completely missing). Certainly I don't think the game would have deserved a 0.6/10 on its own merits, but Blizzard was asking (forcing?) people to pay for the game a second time, so it should *at least* provide all the stuff it had before that point. When can we expect more promotion / more announcements about Shield Battery? Thanks for all of your hard work.
Soon 
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LOL hardly suprising to see Blizzard discontinuing their SC:R support completely now. With the recent problems with hacks and unsafe ladder experience, its a matter of time until this community migrates back to a private server. Playing on the battle.net servers will perhaps be just a short intermezzo.
If something comes up, whether it be Shieldbattery, ICCUp again (in 1.6, i can't see somebody putting in the effort to make SC:R viable on it) or a completely new server, i will be willing to migrate.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
People keep talking about iCCUP as saviours of sorts but in the last few years before remastered the little that iCCUP cared about BW really shone through with a load of changes pushed through for the DOTA side with no consideration at all to the StarCraft side at all. I remember complaining about something on their forums and getting told im sorry this is how it is, we have to change this for DOTA and because it runs the same we cant change anything.
I'm hoping Shieldbattery can take over, because I never want to touch iCCUP again.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded.
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On January 24 2021 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded.
What was terrible about Fish?
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 24 2021 00:52 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded. What was terrible about Fish?
Minimal map support for ladder, generally unfriendly to newcomers / foreigners. Its obvious saving grace was its large number of skilled Korean players to play with, but with ICCup in terminal decline and Fish being the only option, it certainly felt like something important was missing throughout that period.
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On January 24 2021 01:16 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 00:52 Jealous wrote:On January 24 2021 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded. What was terrible about Fish? Minimal map support for ladder, generally unfriendly to newcomers / foreigners. Its obvious saving grace was its large number of skilled Korean players to play with, but with ICCup in terminal decline and Fish being the only option, it certainly felt like something important was missing throughout that period.
The trick was to not be a foreigner. There were plenty of resources for learning the most basic words needed to survive, and Korean is very easy to read if you want to go that way. Communities like TL force everyone to speak English, so I never saw that as a real issue. There were also foreigner channels
But yes, in a way, any filter will automatically exclude those for whom even small barriers are too much trouble, so it wasn't ideal. Terrible is a stretch, though, and is looking at it only from the (possibly stubborn) perspective of the small foreign scene of the time.
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This is highway robbery! Activision/Blizz made promises...then they took the money and ran. I'm going to demand a refund!!
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quick question - is ASL played on SC:R and what does this mean for the future of korean "pro" scene?
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On January 23 2021 20:17 Musicus wrote:
so basicaly they fucked wc3, made some cash and then abandoned it...
W3Champions is nice and they are heroes of the scene. But I can't believe Blizzard (Activision) is just gonna leave the game without a ladder and all the other missing features.
Wc3 reforged without W3C is 10 times worse than TFT was and it does not only miss old features, but almost nothing new is in the game. No extra skins apart fromt the preorder skins, no ingame hotkeys etc... just worse graphics (at least for multiplayer).
Thankfully the hardcore scene will mange fine without Blizzard. But the fact that they forced us to pay for that bullshit again (since the original TFT was taken down) and just made everything worse, is honestly a crime.
Reading all these horror stories of WC3:R makes me realise how much we lucked out on BW:R...
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On January 24 2021 04:33 Miragee wrote:
Reading all these horror stories of WC3:R makes me realise how much we lucked out on BW:R...
you lucked out and i havent played for 4 years
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On January 23 2021 16:18 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2021 09:48 Torchise wrote:
The last paragraph of the article says that Blizzard still wants to update WC3:Reforged, although obviously it's no longer in Team 1's hands. Remains to be seen how they will fix the game and how much it will get support.
Team 1 was also responsible for Heroes of the Storm, SC2 as well as SC:R. That explains why Blizzard recently dropped support for all of these games. This pretty much marks the end of old-school Blizzard (if you still had hope of the Blizzard of old to make a resurgence) since it shows that Activision is very willing to interfere with Blizzard's operations. I never liked the game but the War3 rehash has been out for a year now so surely it's in a far more playable state than it was right? The user rating of 0.6/10 on metacritic with 30,000 reviews is an exaggeration yeah? People scoring it low due to blizzard bricking the original client? Nobody should be surprised they closed the team after that PR disaster.
The only updates we've received for Reforged outside some minor campaign bug fixes in the first month have been mockup screenshots of UI; this is how profiles will look, this is how ladder will look etc. They've always just said it's still in the planning stage and that the actual update will be coming soon. So yea, 1 year later and there are still no profiles, stats, ladder etc. The game would be completely dead if it wasn't for w3champions(a 3rd party community ladder).
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On January 24 2021 05:01 toriak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 04:33 Miragee wrote:
Reading all these horror stories of WC3:R makes me realise how much we lucked out on BW:R... you lucked out and i havent played for 4 years
I haven't played, either, nor did I buy it. I meant we as a community.
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classic blizzard
or i guess, not classic blizzard, because the classic teams gone now
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Russian Federation1893 Posts
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable)
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On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable)
They have been working on making it work with RM.
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On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable)
It's peer to peer.
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Where is a safe place to download the 1.16.1 version to see how it plays now ? Is it possible?
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gonna be a bummer if queue breaks more.
tbh, I prefer SCR queue system than to shield battery. I have 0 problems playing koreans 95% of the time and I found shield battery to be a bit unforgiving in skill levels of other players.
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On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable)
We have Remastered working (but it's not on our public server currently). Network connections are proxied peer-to-peer (that is, each pair of players in a game picks a proxy server that is ideal for them, so a game still involves a separate connection per pair of players, but there are no issues with port forwarding/hosting ever).
On January 24 2021 16:43 SchAmToo wrote:
gonna be a bummer if queue breaks more.
tbh, I prefer SCR queue system than to shield battery. I have 0 problems playing koreans 95% of the time and I found shield battery to be a bit unforgiving in skill levels of other players.
I'm not sure what that judgment really means tbh, we never shipped matchmaking on ShieldBattery to the public (or had open account creation), so there's not really much to compare. The previous launch of SB was a closed beta that never got to the point of delivering the basic features we had in mind before Blizzard made development very hard.
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On January 24 2021 11:05 TelecoM wrote:
Where is a safe place to download the 1.16.1 version to see how it plays now ? Is it possible?
SC 1.16.1 is included in SCHNAIL (you need to register before download):
https://schnail.com
As a bonus you get bots to play against.
ICCup webpage provides download as well.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On January 24 2021 00:52 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded. What was terrible about Fish?
Given Fish's anti cheat was essentially Malware I'd say that was a problem.
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i dont care about new developments, just keep the servers alive  \
tec27 doing God's work
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On January 25 2021 00:49 toriak wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 11:05 TelecoM wrote:
Where is a safe place to download the 1.16.1 version to see how it plays now ? Is it possible? SC 1.16.1 is included in SCHNAIL (you need to register before download): As a bonus you get bots to play against.
This version of 1.16, as far as I am aware, is packaged specifically for SCHNAIL and I've not been able to use it for multiplayer - I had spoken to Sonko about it, and this was intentional. However, I didn't try ICCup, so that might still work.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On January 25 2021 00:51 Qikz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 00:52 Jealous wrote:On January 24 2021 00:16 LegalLord wrote:
This absolutely felt inevitable from the get-go. Though SCR got a lot of good fanfare at the beginning, I always felt that transitioning back to a Blizzard-centered system would eventually end badly. To its credit, it came at a time when ICCup was in terminal decline and the only other credible incumbents (e.g. Fish) were terrible, but a private server solution was always the answer in the long run. Games survive better if you don't depend on its publisher to stay interested in it, that's a lesson learned through painful experience many times over.
At least it wasn't as bad as WC3: Refunded. What was terrible about Fish? Given Fish's anti cheat was essentially Malware I'd say that was a problem.
It was all-around a pretty bad platform. I remember for the longest time it was just straight Fighting Spirit until they finally added a couple of new maps to ladder at the very end. The veteran playerbase was its only saving grace.
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On January 24 2021 21:21 tec27 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable) We have Remastered working (but it's not on our public server currently). Network connections are proxied peer-to-peer (that is, each pair of players in a game picks a proxy server that is ideal for them, so a game still involves a separate connection per pair of players, but there are no issues with port forwarding/hosting ever).
Question on this, but doesn't this increase latency between players by having a proxy server in between?
If my ideal proxy is in euro, the korean's is in korea, do we then have to wait for the proxies to transmit to each other or is 3rd 'middle' proxy chosen to alleviate this? Would there be an optional forced p2p for those of us capable of portforwarding?
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I think the best thing would be server hosted games like in sc2, europeans could play against koreans that way, both connecting to a US central server and playing with ~130-140 ping. (TR20 low or TR24 high).
Or hosted like rus_brain suggested, in Novosibirsk, probably can even get TR24 low between korea and europe then. (as happens in WC3).
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On January 25 2021 06:25 Armathai wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 21:21 tec27 wrote:On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable) We have Remastered working (but it's not on our public server currently). Network connections are proxied peer-to-peer (that is, each pair of players in a game picks a proxy server that is ideal for them, so a game still involves a separate connection per pair of players, but there are no issues with port forwarding/hosting ever). Question on this, but doesn't this increase latency between players by having a proxy server in between? If my ideal proxy is in euro, the korean's is in korea, do we then have to wait for the proxies to transmit to each other or is 3rd 'middle' proxy chosen to alleviate this? Would there be an optional forced p2p for those of us capable of portforwarding?
Given the prevalence of easy DDOS, allowing/encouraging straight P2P play as games used to do just seems like a pretty bad idea to me. It also prevents us from monitoring things on boxes we control (for things like hacking, collecting replays as the game progresses, assigning true disconnect fault, etc.).
These proxy servers can actually provide *improved* latency though. You shouldn't see them as necessarily an additional hop outside of the normal path, but rather a *different* hop, one that is in a big network provider's datacenter that has good connectivity/routes to other parts of the world. We don't pick ideal proxy servers based on your connection, we pick it based on *the pair of players*. So your "ideal proxy" would be the one that minimizes latency between you and the Korean player together, not something that is chosen in isolation. People use VPNs to guarantee a particular (fast) route to other areas of the world, and it's sort of a similar idea. At some point in the future we may even adopt a more directly similar approach, or use something like NetworkNext which is focused on maintaining that sort of network.
We don't have any kind of analytic data to support this, but anecdotally players were far happier with our approach (especially in team games) than ICCup, despite the underlying game protocol being identical. I'd encourage you to actually try it out before you ask us to roll it back
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ShieldBattery had amazing latency for me when I played fwiw. Played team games, FFAs, and obs games with players from all over.
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TLADT24920 Posts
I can also vouch that sb worked really well back when I played it before RM release. Seeing as we aren't getting much changes anymore, I can see sb playing a major role in the future if the ladder breaks down and blizzard decides not to make any fixes.
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Dam this sucks, it doesn't even cost them that much to maintain a team to run BW.
Anyway at this point I just hope they maintain the servers, update new ladder seasons once a quarter, fix bugs and hacks. That's all I ask for really.
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On January 26 2021 17:03 Dante08 wrote:
Anyway at this point I just hope they maintain the servers, update new ladder seasons once a quarter, fix bugs and hacks. That's all I ask for really.
Um, maybe I'm missing something but when did they actually do this?
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Belgium6768 Posts
This all went to shit the minute Activision and Blizzard merged. Fuck that company.
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Does SB supports 1.16.1 still? I'm out of touch lately, if it is that will be amazing. I'm really tired from fucked up SD graphics on Remastered.
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On January 27 2021 06:08 outscar wrote:
Does SB supports 1.16.1 still? I'm out of touch lately, if it is that will be amazing. I'm really tired from fucked up SD graphics on Remastered.
Actually, that's a really good point. If we do end up having to move away from b.net onto private servers/shield battery, whats the point of using remastered over the original client?
SD graphics are just fine in 1.16.1 and the new graphics do have some flaws (worse visibility, all graphics being slightly off centered etc.). We know how to get 1.16.1 to run just fine on Windows 10, so even that advantage of remastered is null and void.
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yeah original graphics are just rendered trashy on remastered I wanted to play with them but it just doesn't look decent because of how badly they are rendered : /
perfect would be that you can use them with full screen also since that's allowed with the new graphics, but need to render them properly. if nobody can full screen then w/e i guess. I mean theres an issue anyway due to the bottom UI being drawn in 4:3 lul but anyway need proper render t_t
i've been having some fun playing 3v3s 4v4s with friends lately, nice that you can pick colors now however honestly there are a few colors that look way too close to each other so that's kinda dumb, can barely tell the difference between gray and black zeals or tan and white and a few others even on minimap that's kinda dumb. I mean the original game doesn't have that issue. I think that may be made worse by the new graphics actually idk cause then it wouldn't be an issue on minimap also
hey it's something ICCup has always missed is that it was only counting ladder games but you couldn't play like 3v3s and get stats for it that was missing you know : D i love to play 3v3 with some mix of premade vs whoever and it's just nice to get a stat count for it everyone likes that i think
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As I said before, tec27 mentioned before that they are working on RM support. There is no point in hypothecizing about which version will be better.
This is doubly true because you not only don't want to estrange the people who grew used to RM graphics, but also because RM is free and legal to DL from Blizzard while 1.16 is abandonware for years at this point. Expecting people to have 1.16 is essentially shutting the door on legal and accessible options for new players, which is always bad. Add this to the fact that many viewers/casuals imaginable prefer RM graphics, I believe that RM is the only choice for SB and y'all are wasting your time discussing 1.16 in this context.
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On January 27 2021 08:59 Jealous wrote:
As I said before, tec27 mentioned before that they are working on RM support. There is no point in hypothecizing about which version will be better.
This is doubly true because you not only don't want to estrange the people who grew used to RM graphics, but also because RM is free and legal to DL from Blizzard while 1.16 is abandonware for years at this point. Expecting people to have 1.16 is essentially shutting the door on legal and accessible options for new players, which is always bad. Add this to the fact that many viewers/casuals imaginable prefer RM graphics, I believe that RM is the only choice for SB and y'all are wasting your time discussing 1.16 in this context.
Yep, 100% this. Fixing how Remastered renders SD graphics is on my planned roadmap, definitely not the highest priority thing though.
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Remastered will deal with SD graphics just fine if your horizontal screen resolution is a multiple of 640 and your vertical screen resolution is higher than your horizontal resolution / 640 * 480. Probably also if your vertical screen resolution is a multiple of 480 and your horizontal screen resolution is higher than your horizontal resolution / 480 * 640. So if your maximum vertical screen resolution is less than 1440, stick to 1280 * 1024 or 1280 * any number higher than 960. Whatever imperfections you believe you see in this mode will be caused by your monitor upscaling the input.
If your vertical screen resolution is 1440 or higher, I believe 2560 * 1440 will also work fine.
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right cause then if my screen is using 1920*1080 then it could be trying to draw the game in SD at 1280*1024 within the 1920*1080, these screens if you switch to a non native resolution you get input lag : s
however i can confirm even using my old CRT on remaster it still wasn't drawing the SD graphics properly (that CRT was running the 640*480 like all CRT can do)
i mean have you tried wimpwimpwimp? cause it doesn't work here, SC:R switches to its own resolution which you can't pick, if I set my screen to 1280*1024 i get my input lag and lower refresh rate on desktop, run SC:R the resolution switches for it and the SD graphics are drawn badly as always
besides you want to be able to pick that resolution from within the game so it starts it up automatically and not switch your desktop resolution every time you run the game
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I'm pretty sure somebody confirmed a while ago that SCR uses the same compression for HD and SD sprites which just happens to look like dogshit in SD mode. No changes to your resolution are gonna fix that.
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On January 28 2021 00:13 Lorch wrote:
I'm pretty sure somebody confirmed a while ago that SCR uses the same compression for HD and SD sprites which just happens to look like dogshit in SD mode. No changes to your resolution are gonna fix that.
Yep, him and me paid 15 € for that dogshit, or for worse graphics than before.
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France1919 Posts
Poll: How important SD graphics getting fixed is for you?Can't wait (57) 51% Don't care (54) 49% 111 total votes Your vote: How important SD graphics getting fixed is for you? (Vote): Can't wait
(Vote): Don't care
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An SD fix would be nice but frankly I've been playing with SD ever since a line of Zerglings ran past 2 of my "HD" Zealots on a ramp on Arcadia in like frontier league and I don't even notice/care anymore, and that is with me playing 1.16 consistently over the past 2 years as well. Really seems like a very minor loss of quality but maybe it is due to my setup(s).
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On January 28 2021 02:50 Jealous wrote:
An SD fix would be nice but frankly I've been playing with SD ever since a line of Zerglings ran past 2 of my "HD" Zealots on a ramp on Arcadia in like frontier league and I don't even notice/care anymore, and that is with me playing 1.16 consistently over the past 2 years as well. Really seems like a very minor loss of quality but maybe it is due to my setup(s).
Nah i dont notice it every day to, its just upsetting to have paid for that downgrade as a matter of principle.
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On January 28 2021 04:03 hgfgfsada wrote:Show nested quote +On January 28 2021 04:00 Cele wrote:On January 28 2021 02:50 Jealous wrote:
An SD fix would be nice but frankly I've been playing with SD ever since a line of Zerglings ran past 2 of my "HD" Zealots on a ramp on Arcadia in like frontier league and I don't even notice/care anymore, and that is with me playing 1.16 consistently over the past 2 years as well. Really seems like a very minor loss of quality but maybe it is due to my setup(s). Nah i dont notice it every day to, its just upsetting to have paid for that downgrade as a matter of principle. ...
SD graphics are part of sc:r, thus i paid for them. Bw graphics are better than sc:r sd graphics. Thuse i paid for a downgrade.
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TLADT24920 Posts
Guys, stop feeding the troll.
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SD or HD work for me.
I prefer HD for casting for obvious reasons, but really I just want my button remapping.
Overall, as I've always said, I fear SB will never have the player pool even a degraded and falling apart SCR ladder will have. The more it takes for a person to be engaged and playing a game, the drastically smaller percentage of players will want to involve themselves to get there. Probably unpopular to say, but ...
Sidenote: whats with all the spam accounts lately?
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shield battery is sick and has great features and committed devs, the harder that blizzard bungles their remastered support the more people that will be pushed to shield battery. just need to get the koreans in there and then it's gg
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On January 28 2021 07:34 SchAmToo wrote:
SD or HD work for me.
I prefer HD for casting for obvious reasons, but really I just want my button remapping.
Overall, as I've always said, I fear SB will never have the player pool even a degraded and falling apart SCR ladder will have. The more it takes for a person to be engaged and playing a game, the drastically smaller percentage of players will want to involve themselves to get there. Probably unpopular to say, but ...
Sidenote: whats with all the spam accounts lately?
Ignore the troll, it's a Blizzard shill who has been doing this for 2 years.
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On January 27 2021 23:45 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
right cause then if my screen is using 1920*1080 then it could be trying to draw the game in SD at 1280*1024 within the 1920*1080, these screens if you switch to a non native resolution you get input lag : s
however i can confirm even using my old CRT on remaster it still wasn't drawing the SD graphics properly (that CRT was running the 640*480 like all CRT can do)
i mean have you tried wimpwimpwimp? cause it doesn't work here, SC:R switches to its own resolution which you can't pick, if I set my screen to 1280*1024 i get my input lag and lower refresh rate on desktop, run SC:R the resolution switches for it and the SD graphics are drawn badly as always
besides you want to be able to pick that resolution from within the game so it starts it up automatically and not switch your desktop resolution every time you run the game
Strange. On this PC Brood War never changes the screen resolution - the game respects whatever resolution is running at launch. This is also how I like it. Having the screen resolution change whenever i alt-tab would be a pain in the butt.
I never noticed input lag using non-native screen resolutions. I did some googling, and apparently this can be an issue, depending on your hardware and if it is your graphics card or your monitor handling the scaling. A GTX 1080 graphics card supposedly needs 80 microseconds to rescale – that’s not a lot.
I guess if your hardware is such that you’ll have to run the game in your monitor’s native resolution, then you have a problem. Still, the difference to my eyes at least between perfectly scaled 1280 x 1024, and 1920 x 1080, really is quite small.
Edit: In Options: Video: Display Mode, selecting "Fullscreen" means the resolution will change. Select Windowed (Fullscreen), and it will not.
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On January 28 2021 02:12 HaN- wrote:Poll: How important SD graphics getting fixed is for you?Can't wait (57) 51% Don't care (54) 49% 111 total votes Your vote: How important SD graphics getting fixed is for you? (Vote): Can't wait
(Vote): Don't care
For some reason I misread the answers and clicked "Can't wait" rather than "Don't care". ;-)
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I wonder if these Blizzard shills get paid by the accounts made.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES50090 Posts
On January 28 2021 22:10 9-BiT wrote:
I wonder if these Blizzard shills get paid by the accounts made.
its the same guy.
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Is SD graphics how it looked before remastered? i also voted wrong on poll, haha. if i could have pre sc:remastered SD graphics i would use that, but it looks horrible in sc:remastered for me so i use the new "improved" graphics.
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Wait, I'm a little confused but is wthe whole dislike of Remastered graphics more of a 'I just like the old feeling' of the original or is it an actual competitive difference? Because every pro and semi-pro I've seen play on stream all use the new graphics.
I personally really like the new graphics, makes watching the game much cleaner and combined with the upgraded spectator/replays it's really clean.
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On January 28 2021 07:34 SchAmToo wrote:
SD or HD work for me.
I prefer HD for casting for obvious reasons, but really I just want my button remapping.
Overall, as I've always said, I fear SB will never have the player pool even a degraded and falling apart SCR ladder will have. The more it takes for a person to be engaged and playing a game, the drastically smaller percentage of players will want to involve themselves to get there. Probably unpopular to say, but ...
Sidenote: whats with all the spam accounts lately?
All you need is to get Korean streamers to swap to Shieldbattery, which they'll gladly do if remastered continues to be plagued by hackers. At that point the entire Korean community will switch, which is like 98% of the player base.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
I like the remastered graphics and I know from personal experience that a lot of people will not watch 1.16, I've heard it over and over again that it looks bad.
It looks fine to us all because we're used to it, but to anyone else it looks terrible.
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On January 24 2021 07:33 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2021 07:21 Rus_Brain wrote:
Technically ShieldBattery is running old 1.16.1 version, right?
Connection is peer2peer or some sort of a hostbots are possible? (Like WC3 Novosibirsk/Russia hostbots make Eu vs Kr playable) They have been working on making it work with RM.
God bless the SB team!
On January 29 2021 07:41 Qikz wrote:
I like the remastered graphics and I know from personal experience that a lot of people will not watch 1.16, I've heard it over and over again that it looks bad.
It looks fine to us all because we're used to it, but to anyone else it looks terrible.
Accurate.
I have a slight preference for RM, but it's subtle. It's when you want to show the game (or proscene) to non-playing friends that RM really shines. It's an almost instant nopekthxbye from friends if I show them 1.16. With RM, some of them will be engaged enough to consider giving it a shot.
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On January 29 2021 06:22 Dunebug6 wrote:
Wait, I'm a little confused but is wthe whole dislike of Remastered graphics more of a 'I just like the old feeling' of the original or is it an actual competitive difference? Because every pro and semi-pro I've seen play on stream all use the new graphics.
I personally really like the new graphics, makes watching the game much cleaner and combined with the upgraded spectator/replays it's really clean.
It's not such a big hurdle for 1.16 fans/players/former pros, if you're referring to my post about the Zealots. It's something someone can easily get accustomed to. As other posters have noted, RM/HD is definitely better for the casual viewer, especially those coming in nowadays and who haven't been around since the 00s.
However, I do note some small differences, particularly in the physical size of units on the screen*. SD Zerglings and Zealots feel "fatter" to me. HD Zealots had already cost me a game. Not that it is HD's fault, but that was the point where I said to myself it's just not worth it to get used to the new models.
I still prefer SD overall, but it's not an objective "this is better" type deal. It's just what I'm used to and instead of learning the new graphics as an old man playing a video game, I'd prefer to stick to the basics. But, if I could play in SD while streaming in HD, I would.
Hope this all made sense from one grumpy old fart!
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TLADT24920 Posts
I think jealous' points are on key. I too gave the HD graphics a try and thought I got used to them, but found that I really missed SD graphics even if they are worst with RM so I've since went back to playing SD. SD graphics just feel timeless to me though I can also understand why someone who wants the newest shinest graphics might not like them when compared with HD graphics and dynamic lighting too etc...
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I watched some ASL/pro-fppov vods last night from before remastered came out, and it's really mind blowing how much worse SD looks in RM. Really made me miss the old graphics, I'd definetly go back if someone were to fix the awful RM SD renderer.
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I think you all are being disingenuous about this topic. HD graphics are objectively better no matter how you slice it.
As a matter of fact HD graphics are the sole reason this game is not dead at the moment. People will still argue against this but realistically SC:R HD graphics are probably the lowest quality a viewer and newish player will go for in this day and age without dismissing the game entirely because of that. (not just SC, just games in general).
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On January 30 2021 22:29 oxKnu wrote:
As a matter of fact HD graphics are the sole reason this game is not dead at the moment.
The game was doing just fine in Korea both player and viewership wise before RM. I don't know what you are on about.
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Other than watching replays/matches on HD I don't really care about new graphics. It's only really good for spectators cause when you zoom in and out graphics don't become distorted. But for playing I prefer 1.16.1 SD for sure.
Not only I want it to be fixed but I also wish they could add widescreen mode for SD.
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It doesn't matter if you prefer old graphics or new, fact is people who like old graphics should be able to use them without them being a blurry mess.Simple as.
Me? I already made my point.The graphics themselves don't bother me but i like the new widescreen mode too much to go back.And to put widescreen in SD you would need to edit the UI, which i am not sure is even possible unless you are blizzard?
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On January 31 2021 03:44 toriak wrote:![[image loading]](https://www.wsgf.org/f/u/contrib/dr/342/ingame_16x10.jpg)
Hello Blizzard, why have you forsaken us?
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Yeah, widescreen is very possible for SD graphics, we mainly avoided doing it in ShieldBattery originally (pre-remastered) because we thought it changed the game too much. Blizzard did it anyway though and here we are, so once we do more work on the SD graphics, that's something we'd probably add (we have to backport some other features we've added too that were easier to add in the HD mode, like translucent starting fog-of-war)
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I worry that Blizz might take exception to a 3rd party client using SCR graphics, we'll have to see how shameless they really are. Having SD widescreen would be an amazing fallback to have tho.
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i'd be pretty happy to be able to play 3v3s with SD graphics again tbh
there are some things that are better to me with the SD Graphics : animations, clarity especially for displaying team color, and in some cases the art direction
it would be neat to be able to play it widescreen with the bottom UI not looking distorted or woot
btw i would suggest maybe 3v3 (& 4v4) ladder : o because the issue of balance comes up a lot
i'm fine with just playing custom games premade vs pick ups but is that ideal??
and the stats, its nice :D
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ya personally i prefer SD graphics (the real non pixelated SD graphics, SD wide would be the dream) but i'm sure the majority of newer players prefer HD
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HD grapics are much better. The only exception is storm and zergling fingers, but I really love what they did and I’m thankfull they bothered with it.
As much as it sucks that they «dont care» about starcraft, I think we should be happy for what they’ve done for the game and that we have had this amazing game for over 20 years
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True.
However there's still that bitterness that if this game was open-sourced or in the right hands it would be in a much better situation than now.
Let's be honest most of the things discussed here are not that complicated from a video-game development perspective considering how far long the industry has come in the past 20 years.
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like for example look at aldaris portrait in HD, do you really like it better than SD? : P
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On February 01 2021 00:58 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
like for example look at aldaris portrait in HD, do you really like it better than SD? : P
On the other hand several of the zerg portraits in HD look too cartoony.
Regarding 1.16.1 people should remember that blizzard added new reverse ramps recently for maps that are incompatible with 1.16.1.
Not a huge issue but another reason why there should be an alternate server for the new version of the game in case the bnet servers do go offline or become unplayable at some stage.
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right i did mean that i much prefer Aldaris in SD version it's kinda same as you said, he's cartoony and less character in HD and I won't go in to describe what he's like in SD but yeah I think overall I do prefer the SD graphics
![[image loading]](https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starcraft/images/4/44/Aldaris_SCR_HeadAnim.gif/revision/latest?cb=20170728141032) ![[image loading]](https://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080317020228/starcraft/images/d/de/Aldaris_SC1_HeadAnim1.gif)
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I prefer HD, but with all the shiny features on it turned off. I switched back to SD recently and have gotten so used to HD that SD looked horrible.
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SD has better character animations and explosions, at least in my opinion
the zoom out is a great feature, though.
a bit smoothed out SD would be a great balance between the two, imo
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Personally I rather like the HD graphics. But I still can't get over how they managed to make the original graphics worse when they released remastered. It can only be deliberate.
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On February 01 2021 22:15 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Personally I rather like the HD graphics. But I still can't get over how they managed to make the original graphics worse when they released remastered. It can only be deliberate.
I did a round of experimentation with SD graphics in remastered last week, and I'm starting to wonder if this idea of "smoother" or "less pixelated" SD graphics in 1.16.1 is a bit of a myth.
It's true the graphics will be skewed a little at most screen resolutions, but at some resolutions they are not skewed at all, and at higher resolutions this is barely noticeable anyway.
Does anyone here have some good screenshots of 1.16.1 so I can compare the two?
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I'm not sure why we are discussing graphis at lenght. Graphics are of acceptable quality as they are, should be lowest on the priority list for something like shield battery.
Need functioning match making, cool channels/features for a real sense of community. The sky is the limit when it's not blizzard working on it.
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On February 01 2021 22:44 wimpwimpwimp wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2021 22:15 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Personally I rather like the HD graphics. But I still can't get over how they managed to make the original graphics worse when they released remastered. It can only be deliberate.
I did a round of experimentation with SD graphics in remastered last week, and I'm starting to wonder if this idea of "smoother" or "less pixelated" SD graphics in 1.16.1 is a bit of a myth. It's true the graphics will be skewed a little at most screen resolutions, but at some resolutions they are not skewed at all, and at higher resolutions this is barely noticeable anyway. Does anyone here have some good screenshots of 1.16.1 so I can compare the two?
Here's the comparison done at same "integer-scale to 480p" resolution (top is 1.16.1, bottom is SC:R SD):
![[image loading]](https://i.ibb.co/6ZmV2N5/SDvsHD.png)
Non-pixelated 1.16 is a myth, it was probably non-integer scaling at 1080p or 1024p that resulted in a bit blurry image.
Pixel-wise there are minor artifacts, but what's more important is loss of color, pay attention to red arrows. Also bottom panels look a lot worse and blurry.
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On February 01 2021 23:37 QuadroX wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2021 22:44 wimpwimpwimp wrote:On February 01 2021 22:15 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Personally I rather like the HD graphics. But I still can't get over how they managed to make the original graphics worse when they released remastered. It can only be deliberate.
I did a round of experimentation with SD graphics in remastered last week, and I'm starting to wonder if this idea of "smoother" or "less pixelated" SD graphics in 1.16.1 is a bit of a myth. It's true the graphics will be skewed a little at most screen resolutions, but at some resolutions they are not skewed at all, and at higher resolutions this is barely noticeable anyway. Does anyone here have some good screenshots of 1.16.1 so I can compare the two? Here's the comparison done at same "integer-scale to 480p" resolution (top is 1.16.1, bottom is SC:R SD): Non-pixelated 1.16 is a myth, it was probably non-integer scaling at 1080p or 1024p that resulted in a bit blurry image. Pixel-wise there are minor artifacts, but what's more important is loss of color, pay attention to red arrows. Also bottom panels look a lot worse and blurry.
Thanks!
To my eyes those are pretty similar. Scr looks slightly sharper or brighter from a distance. But as you said in scr the bottom panels and possibly the unit portraits are for some reason blurred.
I’m not sure there’s actually a loss of color in scr though. I think possibly scr has a larger color palette (see for example the number of greens on the hatcheries), resulting in the original art being more accurately represented.
Or maybe the color palettes are just different.
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pretty sure i ran that test before yeah you will get the artifacts no matter the resolution you use I actually ran it at 640*480 on my CRT I believe using windowed fullscreen then to force the resolution. which is still problematic even if that would be the way to display clean because you don't want to switch your desktop resolution every time you run the game.
but then yeah there is a second problem due to modern monitors underperforming at non native resolutions so you'd kinda need the 1280*960 display within whatever resolution you are using which is native to your monitor I guess.. (for no input lag and max refresh rate)
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On February 02 2021 01:56 ProMeTheus112 wrote:
pretty sure i ran that test before yeah you will get the artifacts no matter the resolution you use I actually ran it at 640*480 on my CRT I believe using windowed fullscreen then to force the resolution. which is still problematic even if that would be the way to display clean because you don't want to switch your desktop resolution every time you run the game.
but then yeah there is a second problem due to modern monitors unperforming at non native resolutions so you'd kinda need the 1280*960 display within whatever resolution you are using which is native to your monitor I guess.. (for no input lag and max refresh rate)
Agree, 1280x960 is pixel-perfect resolution for SD SC:R/BW since it's an integer scaling. Not only graphics look without distortions it also makes sure small dots on the minimap never change their proper pixel size regardless of position. I saw many Koreans play with black borders all around to box 1280x960 into 1920x1080 screen. Next best would be 1440p monitor which are a bit pricey but still available.
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On February 01 2021 23:37 QuadroX wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2021 22:44 wimpwimpwimp wrote:On February 01 2021 22:15 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
Personally I rather like the HD graphics. But I still can't get over how they managed to make the original graphics worse when they released remastered. It can only be deliberate.
I did a round of experimentation with SD graphics in remastered last week, and I'm starting to wonder if this idea of "smoother" or "less pixelated" SD graphics in 1.16.1 is a bit of a myth. It's true the graphics will be skewed a little at most screen resolutions, but at some resolutions they are not skewed at all, and at higher resolutions this is barely noticeable anyway. Does anyone here have some good screenshots of 1.16.1 so I can compare the two? Here's the comparison done at same "integer-scale to 480p" resolution (top is 1.16.1, bottom is SC:R SD): Non-pixelated 1.16 is a myth, it was probably non-integer scaling at 1080p or 1024p that resulted in a bit blurry image. Pixel-wise there are minor artifacts, but what's more important is loss of color, pay attention to red arrows. Also bottom panels look a lot worse and blurry.
I don't think comparing WMode 2x to SC:R is really what you'd want to do, as it just does a nearest-neighbor scale (which is not all that dissimilar to what SC:R is doing). You'd really want to use either ShieldBattery (which does an interpolated scale) or 640x480 full screen (and you'd probably need to take an actual picture of your monitor to get an accurate feel for how that looks, instead of just the raw graphics output).
Regardless of that outcome, there's a fair bit of work that's gone into developing "better" pixel scalers for classic game emulation that I think could work well for BW's SD graphics as well, e.g. https://www.datagenetics.com/blog/december32013/index.html
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What tec27 said.
You can do a lot with 1.16.1 using your GPUs software (e.g. nvidia control panel). In remastered you are stuck using blizzards poor scaling algorithm. It is a shame that there is no way to run SC:R at 640x480.
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EPT
