EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/iydSDrd.png)
I'm happy to announce that ShieldBattery is finally back! I started this project almost 8 years ago with the goal of bringing StarCraft out of the Windows 98 era. Blizzard helped a lot with that, but also left us, the community, without a lot of control over our own destiny should they lose interest. We think it's time for the community to take back the reins.
After countless hours of work (over literal years), we're shipping an update today that brings StarCraft: Remastered support, improvements to a number of our existing features, and skill-based 1v1 matchmaking. And, maybe more importantly, we're now in open beta: anyone can sign up for an account and start playing immediately.
Full list of features and changes (not really, there's too much to keep track of!)
- StarCraft: Remastered support added (and 1.16 support removed
) - Open beta! Invite process removed, signups are instant.
- Matchmaking. 1v1 for now, teams (arranged and random) are in the works and a high priority for us.
- Cloud-based map uploads, currently to your own private collection. In the future we'll allow you to manage a public collection and work to collect different versions of the same map together.
- Transparent starting fog of war (in HD graphics, SD coming soon)
- More game server locations. In addition to the coverage we had in US West, US East, and central Europe locations before, we also now have servers in Korea (Seoul), Australia (Sydney), Brazil (São Paulo), and Sweden (Stockholm).
I'd like to thank all of the contributors who've helped keep this project alive over the last few years and gotten us to the place we are now:
- 2Pacalypse-
- neive
- Excalibur_Z
- v1
- and many more!
We're committed to delivering a top-notch StarCraft experience, developed and run by community members, with a tight feedback loop with all of you. This release is just the first of many more. We're going to be constantly delivering new features and improvements from here on out. If there are things that bug you about playing or observing, cool new ideas you have for the game, or things you'd like to see work differently on ShieldBattery, we'd love to hear about it.
We have a new Discord where all of our contributors hang out that can be used for reporting bugs or suggesting changes. We'd also love you to stop by if you're interested in contributing directly to the codebase.
Lastly, some of you have asked about contributing to our maintenance and hosting costs. I've taken the time to set up a company to manage our funds, and a few different sites to choose from if you'd like to help out. I'm working on this project full time for the moment, and if we get enough contributions I'm happy (very excited, even
) to keep doing that for as long as possible. Check our our updated FAQ page for more info and links.That's it, you made it! Want to start playing?
