Visibility/Clarity in SC2

On February 19 2010 11:17 TheAntZ wrote:
Anyone who isnt a blind fanboy sees it at this point tbh, even with the CLEAREST streams, its difficult to see zerg units properly

On February 19 2010 11:29 blade55555 wrote:


If you have ever played another game other then sc you would realize its not that hard to follow.

I find it easy to follow while the stream quality is decent in alot the psyonic_reaver stream seems kind of dark so makes it a bit harder to see whats going on but I still know whats going on. I don't find it hard at all its nice can only hope korea takes this game up ^^.

On February 19 2010 11:17 TheAntZ wrote:
Anyone who isnt a blind fanboy sees it at this point tbh, even with the CLEAREST streams, its difficult to see zerg units properly

On February 19 2010 11:45 DeCoup wrote:
The only reason it is hard to follow is because the streamers are playing at the max res they can instead of lowering their res to that of the stream output. This is causing downscaling which is making each unit much less identifiable and turning what should be crisp battles into more of a mud or on a better stream still hindering the visibility of projectiles.

On February 19 2010 11:31 TheAntZ wrote:


i've played sc, wc3, c&c (all of them). ra2,3, dawn of war, dow2

On February 19 2010 11:51 blade55555 wrote:


I'm not a blind fanboy I am just not retarded and can see just fine. Sorry your having issues seeing correctly not my problem ^^

On February 19 2010 11:17 TheAntZ wrote:
Anyone who isnt a blind fanboy sees it at this point tbh, even with the CLEAREST streams, its difficult to see zerg units properly

On February 19 2010 11:42 Ryoo wrote:
A spectator sport needs to be eye-friendly with a variety of age groups... I don't think adults can keep track of what's happening in SC2.

My father once saw a shuttle/reaver micro vs 3 tanks on a Korean portal site and he said it was amazing, even though he doesn't like games.

On February 19 2010 11:59 QuasiMachina wrote:
SC1 runs in 640x480, which is very close to the resolution which games are typically streamed with. Seeing as SC2 is a much higher resolution game, there is no way blizard would be able to give low res streams the same visual clarity as in SC1, without greatly reducing the game's detail. I agree that team colours could be slightly more pronounced, but other than that, i think blizz have done a great job.

Oh, and the camera is further away

On February 19 2010 12:03 KhaosKreator wrote:
When you first played SC, did you have any idea of what was going on on zerg creep? I know I didn't. It's a visual cluster-fuck.

You just need time to get used to it.

On February 19 2010 11:17 TheAntZ wrote:
Anyone who isnt a blind fanboy sees it at this point tbh, even with the CLEAREST streams, its difficult to see zerg units properly

On February 19 2010 12:11 Hyde wrote:
I've found that on KHB's stream I can actually tell what is going on, and that's because he's turned down everything. It looks bland and nothing really sparkles, but it's clear as day and I actually enjoyed watching it that way because I could actually tell what the heck was going on. Compared to the other streams, which I found myself concentrating a lot harder and was still sometimes confused as to who was winning the battle.
Kind of sucks though, because the graphics are really nice and pretty when turned up.

On February 19 2010 17:35 pzea469 wrote:
ive been playing the beta and everything looks really clear to me. However, when you mass an army, since they all kind of stick together as close as possible it gets hard to distinguish units. I was trying to find my high templar among so many zealots hugging it. It was really hard to see clearly. That would be my biggest gripe so far i think, is the way the units just clump together like magnets.

On February 19 2010 11:42 Ryoo wrote:
A spectator sport needs to be eye-friendly with a variety of age groups... I don't think adults can keep track of what's happening in SC2.

My father once saw a shuttle/reaver micro vs 3 tanks on a Korean portal site and he said it was amazing, even though he doesn't like games.

On February 19 2010 21:10 Scorch wrote:
I'd like it if units had larger collision boxes so they don't cluster up that much. The units themselves are easy to distinguish as far as I'm concerned, it only gets difficult if there's one blob of tightly packed, overlapping units clusterfucking.

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:

The problem is that the game is rendered in 3D, which is what I've been warning people about since more than 5 years before SC2 was even announced

RTS gameplay is not 3D, it's played on a 2D grid and our minds conceptualize it as a 2D game. Taking gameplay from 2D and translating it into 3D adds a really thick layer of distraction to the human mind and there's no way of getting around it, it doesn't matter how good technology gets

The game should have been designed in high resolution 2D with proper art direction and maybe some optional lighting and explosion effects, with an engine that borrowed from original Starcraft to preserve the overall 1 in a million feel of Starcraft gameplay

If they did that, SC2 could have potentially been a major improvement on the original Starcraft (expanding the field of visibility with a higher resolution, better 2D graphics and new units and abilities all sound great to me). But they chose to make the game 3D because that's the safer play in terms of profit, 100% guaranteeing that SC2 could not possibly be an improvement over SC1 competitively

And I'm not trolling. Trolls don't put thought into their posts, I'm being genuine. SC2 is beyond repair and has been for years, and the only hope is for Blizzard to scrap it and make the very bold decision to pursue designing a 2D game in the year 2010

This is the reason the RTS market is so tiny compared to other genres. It's because of this obligation every developer feels to make every game 3D. It ruins the game in the same way trying to render GTA IV in 2D would ruin that game. The visual element doesn't match the gameplay.

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:

The problem is that the game is rendered in 3D, which is what I've been warning people about since more than 5 years before SC2 was even announced

RTS gameplay is not 3D, it's played on a 2D grid and our minds conceptualize it as a 2D game. Taking gameplay from 2D and translating it into 3D adds a really thick layer of distraction to the human mind and there's no way of getting around it, it doesn't matter how good technology gets

The game should have been designed in high resolution 2D with proper art direction and maybe some optional lighting and explosion effects, with an engine that borrowed from original Starcraft to preserve the overall 1 in a million feel of Starcraft gameplay

If they did that, SC2 could have potentially been a major improvement on the original Starcraft (expanding the field of visibility with a higher resolution, better 2D graphics and new units and abilities all sound great to me). But they chose to make the game 3D because that's the safer play in terms of profit, 100% guaranteeing that SC2 could not possibly be an improvement over SC1 competitively

And I'm not trolling. Trolls don't put thought into their posts, I'm being genuine. SC2 is beyond repair and has been for years, and the only hope is for Blizzard to scrap it and make the very bold decision to pursue designing a 2D game in the year 2010

This is the reason the RTS market is so tiny compared to other genres. It's because of this obligation every developer feels to make every game 3D. It ruins the game in the same way trying to render GTA IV in 2D would ruin that game. The visual element doesn't match the gameplay.

On February 19 2010 19:51 Bash wrote:
Wow, TheAntZ sure enjoys being unpleasant to people on the internet, I wonder what his problem is.

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:
And I'm not trolling. Trolls don't put thought into their posts[...] the only hope is for Blizzard to scrap it and make the very bold decision to pursue designing a 2D game in the year 2010

On February 19 2010 21:33 NeoLearner wrote:
Maybe they were planning on creative camera usage to make eSports more visible, with 360 degree replays and close ups

On February 20 2010 05:25 Zelniq wrote:
yes after playing 40+ games as zerg, still a huge problem imo. the clarity is just so difficult to make out.

what they need to do is have a serious-for-competition video settings that make the game as clear and crisp as they can be, for both players and also observers

On February 19 2010 11:17 TheAntZ wrote:
Anyone who isnt a blind fanboy sees it at this point tbh, even with the CLEAREST streams, its difficult to see zerg units properly

On February 19 2010 17:22 Badred wrote:
After having played a few dozen games and wistfully watching streams while at work, I think people are making more of this then there is. I watched a ZvZ just now on Psyonic Reaver's stream and was able to pretty much call what was going on. Once you know the units and how they look and move, it's much easier to differentiate them in a fair quality stream. With that said, I'm sure Blizzard is aware of the overall issue and are likely listening and taking steps to make everything for clear. One example of where they've taken the initiative is with zealots - when they die their "spirit/smoke" is the colour of the player, rather then always blue.

I'm not saying there are no issues outstanding on this topic, just that I think the system actually works better than many people are giving it credit for as is. Zergling battles were always a clusterfart anyway. :p

On February 19 2010 19:51 Bash wrote:
Wow, TheAntZ sure enjoys being unpleasant to people on the internet, I wonder what his problem is.

I don't have any problems following what's happening, I think the problem many people have is that they don't know the units. BW wasn't exactly clear the first few games I saw of it, either, in fact I thought it was laughably unclear coming from a background of WC2. ZvZ can be extremely chaotic but can you honestly claim it isn't so in BW?

Also, SC2 streamable VODs (whether there'll be any need to have those is EXTREMELY suspect) will obviously be in much higher quality as people are having better internet connections and can handle watching them, just like live streams and VODs in say, HoN are right now.

On February 20 2010 06:19 MamiyaOtaru wrote:
I'd much rather see this in 2d. As it is, units near the top of the screen are going to be harder to click on (smaller). Sounds like potential imbalance issues vis-a-vis attacking from the top or from the bottom. Sucks to start at 6.

On February 19 2010 11:29 blade55555 wrote:


If you have ever played another game other then sc you would realize its not that hard to follow.

I find it easy to follow while the stream quality is decent in alot the psyonic_reaver stream seems kind of dark so makes it a bit harder to see whats going on but I still know whats going on. I don't find it hard at all its nice can only hope korea takes this game up ^^.

On February 19 2010 11:26 TeWy wrote:
I find it very easy to understand everything, probably due to the fact that I plaid a lot of 3D RTS games.

On February 19 2010 11:26 jalstar wrote:
It looks fine to me, much better than the battle reports, and this was one of my biggest concerns.

On February 19 2010 11:42 Ryoo wrote:
A spectator sport needs to be eye-friendly with a variety of age groups... I don't think adults can keep track of what's happening in SC2.

My father once saw a shuttle/reaver micro vs 3 tanks on a Korean portal site and he said it was amazing, even though he doesn't like games.

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:
The problem is that the game is rendered in 3D, which is what I've been warning people about since more than 5 years before SC2 was even announced

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:
The game should have been designed in high resolution 2D with proper art direction and maybe some optional lighting and explosion effects, with an engine that borrowed from original Starcraft to preserve the overall 1 in a million feel of Starcraft gameplay

If they did that, SC2 could have potentially been a major improvement on the original Starcraft (expanding the field of visibility with a higher resolution, better 2D graphics and new units and abilities all sound great to me). But they chose to make the game 3D because that's the safer play in terms of profit, 100% guaranteeing that SC2 could not possibly be an improvement over SC1 competitively

And I'm not trolling. Trolls don't put thought into their posts, I'm being genuine. SC2 is beyond repair and has been for years, and the only hope is for Blizzard to scrap it and make the very bold decision to pursue designing a 2D game in the year 2010

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:
RTS gameplay is not 3D, it's played on a 2D grid and our minds conceptualize it as a 2D game. Taking gameplay from 2D and translating it into 3D adds a really thick layer of distraction to the human mind and there's no way of getting around it, it doesn't matter how good technology gets

On February 20 2010 07:22 zee wrote:
How about adding colored borders (same color as the color you are) around the healthbars? that would help a lot in seeing who is winning big battles. or just have different colored healthbar so we can distinguish who is who. that would save space too.

On February 20 2010 05:57 SubtleArt wrote:

Honestly In ScBW I can tell whats going on perfectly. Its much more clear and you really can't deny that. Even massive ZvZ ling battles where fairly obvious with the exception of yellow v white

On February 20 2010 07:28 milly9 wrote:


This. I noticed with always on health bars it can be even harder to tell whose who

On February 20 2010 01:00 Klive5ive wrote:
SC1 intially sold well because of its really nice graphics and this game needs to be the same. Ultimately its not even that big of a problem.

On February 20 2010 11:38 Polygamy wrote:
The way every thing has a life bar over it is just horrible looking... I think it makes it very tacky looking as well.

On February 19 2010 11:22 yoshi_yoshi wrote:
Yea another thing is that I don't know why they decreased the effect of player colors. In BW every unit except Archon is instantly recognizable as to what team they belong to. I especially appreciated how Zerglings had skin color matching their team color. From the streams it looks like team colors are less noticeable - sometimes in mirror matchups it's hard to tell what belongs to who. Zerg is just 'dark', no real colors.

On February 20 2010 05:23 milly9 wrote:
People that are saying they see everything clearly, are clearly deluded. Try putting some of the flying Protoss Ships overtop of the Protoss Buildings- now you see it, now you don't! And as mentioned this is quite prominent with Zerg creep.

On February 19 2010 20:44 Kentucky wrote:
The game should have been designed in high resolution 2D with proper art direction and maybe some optional lighting and explosion effects, with an engine that borrowed from original Starcraft to preserve the overall 1 in a million feel of Starcraft gameplay

On February 20 2010 20:42 Arikuna wrote:
i've played ~40games as random so far and i had no problems with visibility. especially zerg is no problem at all, although i can't identify all the buildings yet.

the only time i didn't really see what happened was in a ~120 vs 120 unit supply battle in pvt - in a tight corner of the map.

On February 20 2010 20:30 XOR3000 wrote:

As an oldchool gamer I am kinda with you here. Just love love love the 2D isometric games. Also gameplay >>>>>> gfx every time. Hell it's even the same with shooters. IMHO UT classic and Q3 are so much better for e-sports than any modern shooter.

Nonetheless I've been thinking about SC in 3D and suddenly Diablo 3 came to my mind. From the video footage I have seen Blizzard has made a much beeter job with D3 in preserving the original game feeling. I instantly get the diablo feeling. SC2 just does not have the same effect. It is a new game resembling some but not all facettes of SC1. Not that I'd say SC2 is bad. But compared to Diablo Blizzard just did a worse job on SC.

On February 19 2010 23:49 BluzMan wrote:


There's no fundamental difference in looks for a 2D isometric game and 3D isometric projection camera game. The thing people fail to understand is that 3D doesn't imply perspective. You can use isometry if you wish, it's all camera programming. The difference is in costs and maintenance. SC2 already cost Blizzard a shitton of money, they simply cannot afford 2D development.

You argument fails in a funny way because isometry itself is the closest thing to 3D feel that exists in the 2D world. And from the physics standpoint, SC2 is as 2D as SC1 is, height doesn't have any impact on the game (elevation and flight do, as boolean indicators of height, but so it is in SC1, isn't it?), so you're essentially playing on the very same 2D grid.

On February 21 2010 01:47 -orb- wrote:
The biggest problem I have is telling different players of the same race apart.

There's simply not enough color per unit... there's too much neutral color area on units that's not governed by the player's color.

On February 21 2010 01:03 Random() wrote:


IMO there are quite a few fundamental differences, such as:

1) Aliasing + small, but highly detailed objects = noise. I think proper use of anti-aliasing is a MUST for a 3D RTS, but as far as I know it is not ever supported in SC2.

2) Perspective, which is present in SC2, constantly changes the perceived screen-space size of the units.

3) Dynamic per-pixel lighting and shading constantly changes the perceived colourisation of the units.

4) (I am not sure how this is implemented in SC2, but it is usually like that in 3D RTSs and looks like shit) Per-pixel z-order comparison instead of per object. The consequence is that in SC1, a unit is drawn either fully beneath, or fully on top of another unit, but never partially here and partially there. For example, a stack of gargoyles in Warcraft 3 looks like a bunch of random triangles thrown together because of the horrible inter-penetration of the 3D models, + Show Spoiler +, but in SC1 units are cleanly overlaid on top of each other so that even in a mess like this + Show Spoiler + you can still easily pick out individual units.

In short, in 2D there is a finite (and very limited) number of ways a unit can look. It is always of same size, in same colours. In 3D, they are rendered in real time, which allows to produce all sorts of fancy lighting&shading effects, plus perspective, which means there is effectively an infinite number of ways the same unit can look. Add the nasty aliasing issues, and in the end it is much more difficult to recognise or "read" a unit.

On February 20 2010 11:52 StarcraftMan wrote:
Because the fanboys over at the Battle.net forums gave feedback to Blizzard that the colors were too bright and that they should tone it down. Blizzard listened to them and this is what we have now.

On February 21 2010 01:03 Random() wrote:
4) but in SC1 units are cleanly overlaid on top of each other so that even in a mess like this + Show Spoiler + you can still easily pick out individual units.

On February 22 2010 02:51 LordLastDay wrote:
In ZvZ on a low quality stream it's pretty hard to tell apart the team colors on many units.
You can tell from the minimap and by the vision around them, though.

For some units it looks fine (Overlord, Corruptor) but those Zerglings and Roaches look all look the same to me.

I'm in my twenties... maybe younger guys have no problem seeing the difference?

On February 19 2010 11:40 talismania wrote:
I think we whined so much about the game being so bright and shiny that they went ahead and made it darker and broodier and now it's too hard to see low-res.

On February 19 2010 23:49 BluzMan wrote:
The truly fundamental difference between a sprite-based and a model-based game is in maintenance - slight tweaks of an animation for a sprite involves redrawing tens to hundreds of pictures, while tweaking a skeleton animation is just adjusting a few skeleton transformation constants. It's ridiculously easier in 3D and that's why you can maintain a much larger amount of game content with the same costs.

On February 22 2010 01:30 elTy_bbq wrote:
You make a couple of very interesting points, but I was really amused that you picked this screenshot to illustrate the visual clarity of SC1. I assure you for people who have never played SC1 or are simply not familiar with its looks, this looks like a complete mess with no logic or order.

On February 19 2010 11:36 shadowmarth wrote:
It's worse than SC, but it would be rather impossible to be as good in a 3D game without being way cartoonier, which people would have bitched for eternity about. Also streams are pretty poor quality. Which isn't their fault, but watching in HD is probably going to be the way to go for a while. At least until we all get it in our hands, and can identify units at a glance better.

On February 19 2010 11:40 talismania wrote:
I think we whined so much about the game being so bright and shiny that they went ahead and made it darker and broodier and now it's too hard to see low-res.

On February 22 2010 11:31 PGHammer wrote:
Watching replays in-game will always beat the heck out of stream-watching due to the nature of streaming (streams are always lossy).

It's not a knock on streaming SC2, either.

The same can be said about C&C 3/RA3 streaming (even via BCPT) compared to in-game replay viewing (again, lossy vs. lossless).

In short, it's the nature of the streaming animal (not the fault of the game/content being streamed).

With SC, we notice it less because the resolution is not as high. SC2, however, is designed for higher (much higher) resolutions than SC is (the detail gone into is a dead-giveaway; even at the lowest resolution and detail level, it blows SC into the weeds). Basically, the fall is further with streaming HD (it's not unique to SC2, or even to gaming; this is something I've noticed with *all* HD content streamed to a PC vs. watched via a higher-bandwidth mechanism) vs. lower-resolution/lower-definition content streams.

On February 23 2010 10:09 [X]Ken_D wrote:
Set shader level to low. It should more easier to see as there is more contrast between units and background.

Anyways, people were bitching long time ago about SC2 being too "colorful". Lol, as if SC1 was any more realistic looking. It looks like a cartoon! People ask for more "gritty" graphics in SC2, now they complain about it being hard to see

On February 22 2010 06:16 Random() wrote:


But the sprites don't have to be hand drawn, do they? It's quite obvious that most of the sprites in SC1/Diablo1-2 are just pre-rendered 3D-models. So why not use the same efficient 3D workflow, only instead of exporting the models in 3D feed them to a tool that automatically generates all the necessary sprites? Given the computational power of current computers rendering several hundred tiny high-quality images shouldn't take too long at all.

I could even imagine an engine that stores all the assets in 3D, but uses the graphics card to pre-render and cache the sprites when needed. This would allow even the shittiest of cards to run a beautiful game that could live with a fixed camera.

Readability issues aside, there are also performance and scalability issues. It's easier to make a 2D engine fast and stable. There were some really bad transitions to 3D that I can remember, such as Heroes or Civilization series that looked and played perfectly well in 2D on 500 MHz machines, but sucked in 3D, both visually and performance-wise.