StarCraft 2

[Kage]

StarCraft 2

So... any RTS fans around? Any fans of StarCraft? Guess what? XD Only a little over a week ago, StarCraft 2 was officially announced.

Whee~

www.starcraft2.com

The graphics look interesting, but I really hate how the Seige Tanks look in Seige Mode. Mothership looks damn cool.

So, any fans of this marvelous franchise? Come, geek with me. Please. >_>; Or well, don't. I'll be back on Wednesday...

Anyways, check the site out. The cinema trailer and the gameplay video are WONDERFUL but the client to download takes forever. >< Well worth it though.

 

[neochu]

yea it looks good I love StarCraft just havent played it in such a long time. The graphics look crazy but if they go DX10 with it it'll be a vista only game and the requirements (as of now) are so insane you would have to be made of money to have an appropriate system for it.


Graphics wise its going to be a toss-up. Because it looks from the previews that their just extruding most of the old models (which would look weird in 3-D as that wasn't a consideration back then.) Especially with the zerg units. The siege tanks from the picks are pretty realistic IMO. With the most damaging weapon in the game (sans the exploding infested terrains) and it being nothing more than a cannon with stands (look at the original) its gonna look like that. Those Dark Templar walkers look nasty though and some of the other new units are going to have better designs too.

I personally wanna see what the new story line and units are going to be along with the video improvements of today for the theatricals. Thats what really got me hooked on it was the characters and engaging story line. I have always liked large selections of units though so the more the merrier to me.

And the video is in Divx format so if you have the splitter or codec for it you should be allright as you wait for the trailer to download

 

[ChikoritaKaizer]

I've never played StarCraft before, but I may decide to pick this game up when it comes out. I've not been buying very many games lately because I'm trying to save my money, so if I pick this up it had better be good >_>. My MacBook Pro should be able to handle this game fine, so I'm not worried about my computer not being able to play it at high settings.

 

[Ryuuk]

So... any RTS fans around? Any fans of StarCraft? Guess what? XD Only a little over a week ago, StarCraft 2 was officially announced.

Whee~

www.starcraft2.com

The graphics look interesting, but I really hate how the Seige Tanks look in Seige Mode. Mothership looks damn cool.

So, any fans of this marvelous franchise? Come, geek with me. Please. >_>; Or well, don't. I'll be back on Wednesday...

Anyways, check the site out. The cinema trailer and the gameplay video are WONDERFUL but the client to download takes forever. >< Well worth it though.

O

M

G

*squeels in joy and then dies of happiness*

 

[/dev/urandom]

The graphics look crazy but if they go DX10 with it it'll be a vista only game and the requirements (as of now) are so insane you would have to be made of money to have an appropriate system for it.

They promise in the FAQ it'll run on XP.

Will the game run natively on Windows Vista?

StarCraft II will be fully compatible with Windows Vista, as well as XP. We'll have more details on system requirements closer to release.

I also expect it to fall back quite nicely on older hardware. This _is_ Blizzard we're talking about here.

Will StarCraft II take advantage of DirectX 10? What other graphical goodies are included?

The game will be compatible with DirectX 10, and we're still considering whether there will be exclusive DirectX 10 graphic effects, but the graphics engine will also be very scalable to ensure that a wide range of different systems will be capable of running StarCraft II. The new engine is also capable of rendering very large units, as well as large numbers of units on screen together. Havok physics have been integrated into the engine for added realism as well.

http://www.starcraft2.com/faq.xml

 

[Kage]

Game requirements-wise, I'm worried my comp wouldn't be able to play it. I'm still running on 256 MB RAM and on a standard, default video card. From what I can see, to play nicely, I'd need some more memory and a better video card.

>_> That havok physics system is sweet but I... don't see the point of it. I'd be too busy going GOTTA RECOVER than to look at the remains of my units.

*squee* I can still mass units.

 

[neochu]

If they add DX10 features it will NOT be XP compatible unless they go on and emulate the specific features on their own or disable them in non DX10 systems. Microsoft has already said officially that DX10 will NOT be XP compatible and for vista only. (an unofficial user created compatibility library exists in beta right now but otherwise this is true) So either Blizzard is talking out of both sides of their mouths or they don't know yet.


Right now DX10 is a very demanding experimental feature set that carries pretty intense hardware requirements mainly a 4-500 dollar PCI-e video card with a near 300 watt power consumption (Aka top of the line). Users who haven't bought a new mobo in a year are in trouble in the compatibility market. This may change in a year but even the most efficient code cannot get around such hardware issues no matter what is said.

Thats another debate though across all games though and this is still a year away so theres still alot of unanswered questions. MS could yet back down on the Vista only issue and hardware prices could become somewhat affordable by then as well so lets see how blizzard plays this as it could be interesting.

 

[Akai Shuichi]

StarCraft looks like an alright video game series, but I'd much rather see them confirm a Diablo III. Diablo is probably my favorite PC game series.

 

[/dev/urandom]

You completely missed the point of the text. They might add in special effects that look nice but aren't required. If you don't have DX10 (ie, not running Vista or have a crappy video card), it just won't show them.

 

[neochu]

If they add DX10 features it will NOT be XP compatible unless they go on and emulate the specific features on their own or disable them in non DX10 systems.

did I now? The same thing happens now with non EAX systems with games if you don't have it the game will still work but you wont receive the sound fx. It will become an issue though if they list DX10 as a minimum requirement and by how much of a reduced experience it will be without it. If it becomes too much of an issue you just may see it become not compatible or it wont be worth it on such a system. If they undercut the minimum requirements like they did with Vista you just may see Blizzard lose its reliability. My point is that they are promising too much from it if they want decent performance on both ends.

As I said though there is alot of other trouble with such things in the gaming market and the hardware as it is yet to be fully solved.

and as for crappy video cards. Only over the past 6 months have any DX10 cards been out. If the only "good" cards as you indicate are the higher priced ones we are in for a collapse of computing. And Vista right now requires some pretty heavy hardware (they undercut the min requirements to the point of them being invalid). so by no means is a non vista machine a crappy machine.