Starcraft Remastered for posterity request

General Discussion
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Starcraft Broodwar is an amazing game, not only that, is one of the Best and most important Video Games of all time, the best RTS that ever existed. Nothing new in here, the problem is that is feels like Starcraft Remastered life is slowly going down, soon to be forgotten as many other games in the mist of the profit lane BLIZZARD and all other companies are following.

But hold on !!, not everything is lost, this thread is aimed to show that we as the SC:RM and Starcraft Broodwar community are indeed interest in playing this game for several years to come, for this I have created a small list (open for edits based on comments) of some features we request from BLIZZARD to be added to Starcraft Remastered with the objective of having many more years of playing this game in the future, even in the event that BLIZZARD decides to pull the plug on Battlenet or stops doing regular updates (things that we hope never happens).

This is not a “feature request thread”, meaning that things like “having wide screen for SD graphics” or “allowing people to change drag speed of middle mouse button” have no place in here, this are features only and only meant to give Starcraft Remastered longevity gameplay and community wise.

BLIZZARD is in the need of bettering its image towards the general public based on the latest developments, with this thread we are only showing and requesting an opportunity to show you care again for a group of people that have been purchasing your products and loving your products for years.

Here is the list:

  1. BWAPI and new AI settings: A lot has been talked about this on the forums since the release of SC:RM, we need some sort of understanding between the community and the Starcraft Remastered TEAM that “BWAPI and new AI settings” is not a luxury or a whim, but something required and honestly deserved after many years. The implementation of BWAPI only would give a long lasting relevance to the game both offline and online, meaning that you could also use BWAPI for online purpose, that is laddering to some extend and custom gaming, BWAPI should work easily, that is by dropping files into folders and then choosing the correct set of maps just like we do with replays files or how we load new maps.
    New AI settings on the other hand refers to the necessity of creating means of modifying the “build in” AI, meaning that we could set the enemy to something like “easy, normal, hard”, and even if this so called Dummy AI`s are not as perfected as BWAPI AI they could “cheated or not” make a better enemy to practice. Also the AI should include some improvement to some basic legacy AI behavior that is honestly exploitable, the list of such behaviors is huge, we just want the BLIZZARD team to be willing to open the code a bit to change some of this things or just make them “public” so people can handle them whether this creates bugs or not.
    Is important to understand that the request for new AI settings goes in hand with the manipulation of the difficulty for the campaign, is of my believe that people should be invited to play the campaign in a harder mode, just let the community design the missions in different sets of difficulty (with different AI settings) and the developers will just publish them in a final campaign update.

  2. Means of creating private servers: Starcraft Broodwar has survived over the years thanks to servers mainly ICCUP & FISH SERVER and the official ones that still exist in name “east, west, asia, korea” etc. The problem is that if by any reason BLIZZARD would pull the plug on the new Battlenet we need a way to ensure that we can keep up with Remastered over private own servers, we don’t want to go back to 1.16 even if many people claim 1.16 to be a superior version, and they probably right, the point is that we deserve some way of knowing for a fact that we are getting Starcraft Remastered for many years to come and anyone willing to invest on a private Remastered server can do it, weather this is for custom games only or also retains laddering those both preferably being options to be given. There should be someone at BLIZZARD teams willing to answer to this straight on once and a for all and either assure us Starcraft Remastered has no plan of shutting down in the next 15 years or they are willing to consider the implementation of such private server API.

  3. Starcraft Remastered Graphics offline KEYS DRM: If Starcraft Remastered becomes a deprecated product, how are we going to maintain the Remastered Graphics for years to come, that includes portraits, consoles and everything related to it, it would be of course maintained through the main Blizzard account attached to the product and client Id, that I can understand, the problem is that how can we assure that in the event of Starcraft Remastered disappearing from the main BLIZZ APP or BLIZZARD closes in a dark parallel universe or the servers shut down and no more official updates are released how can we know for certain that we will be able to keep playing and using Remastered Graphics and features for years to come, even after the 30 days period.

This are the request I think are important to set before time, personally I hope that BLIZZARD doesn’t have any immediate plans of killing Starcraft Remastered they are still pushing KSL and the community as a whole, at the moment of this writing we are waiting for Team Match making at some point next year and we are hoping to get some features and quality of life requests done for Christmas. We love this game, and we want a product that stands alone for years to come in the future, personally I am sure that Cloud Gaming will revive old BLIZZARD products once more at some point in the near future, but that is a wild guess, maybe it will happen maybe it won’t, we can’t rely on such a vain hope and even then we know Starcraft Broodwar is not necessarily a good game to be played with Cloud Latency, we need to have a product we can play even if the apocalypse falls. Can BLIZZARD answer to this requests in a serious manner?

3 Likes
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I just commented about this in another thread while you were writing this.

Content stored locally that is locked behind DRM:
Example, remastered graphics. I suspect that DRM would be coded out of the client before the service and/or Bliz shut down. That would allow the content to be used indefinitely without connection to the servers.

Content stored server-side:
For example, console skins. Unless Bliz took the time to code a transfer of all that data to the local client, it’d be lost. But then, none of that is actually behind DRM; it’s just saved elsewhere.

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Thanks for the reply, you have always been one of the smartest person in this Forums, i am sure Blizzard would not even dare to withhold content people have payed or worked for “portraits and such”, i believe this should be somehow either downloaded by some means or perpetually available while Blizzard is still a thing.

By the way what do you personalty think about the other posterity feature request?, i would love to hear your opinion about them.

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Hey author you else here…?

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yes i am here what you mean?, sorry my English is not very good.

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The ability to seamlessly play on private servers, in the event that Bliz/SC ever shut down, I feel, is a valid request. That would keep the multiplayer aspect alive in some form or another. Like DRM, I suspect it would come closer to the end of Bliz/SC.

I don’t have experience with BWAPI so I can’t say much about it. But, a few AI levels would be nice in my opinion. I’d like to see them available in the custom games for sure. In the campaign, sure, but I don’t care too much if it is or isn’t.

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Thanks for the reply, remember that BWAPI is a big community that already has hundreds of available bots online to play against.

Some of this BOTS are only available for certain maps and certain races, playing with them is not 100% the same as playing against a real human beings, and probably never will, but they are obviously a much better practice and experience than the legacy AI`s.

Anyone can check this in action here:

Not as much as answering you but for anyone reading BWAPI has this advantages for the Starcraft Broodwar Community:

  1. It allows people to practice offline against BOTS.
  2. it pushes Starcraft as an AI learning platform
  3. It gives longevity to the game because people can “feel” how the game is played vs a skilled BOT without an internet connection.
  4. It bring new an renewed interest to Starcraft Remastered, both as a product and as a community.
  5. It helps unite the AI dev community with its core audience, which never has been done before and could have very positive outcomes.
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Finally its good to see that people understand the importance of a competitive AI. All the comments I have made about a modern AI so far only to get shut down by other ““hardcore”” fans, made me feel like a crazy old guy yelling crazy stuff. A new AI is important for this game. Why? Here’s my thoughts.

First of all, a modern AI its the only true way to preserve the competitive aspect of the game and emulate a similar competitive experience for the far next generations that will discover the game, after its competitive scene is no more. It doesnt has to be a pro gamer level of emulation; just the level of an average to a good broodwar player (from very basic F to lets say B in terms of AI skill) to be adequate enough. Quake 3 is a shining example of how a good AI can make a competitive game to stay alive forever by emulating a match.

Second, it’s the very standard way for a newcomer or a noob to practice and have fun with the game. Lets be honest here. The ladder is mostly consists of people that have played the game since 2000 and also make smurf accounts just to get their cheap victories. Can a new gen gamer overcome that huge skill gap? The answer is yes, BUT they need to treat this game as a job just to get a small fighting chance in the ladder. Does it really worth to invest so much time? Judging from this game future, the chances tell otherwise. But besides that, cant a guy whos not that competitive due to his lack of skill or dedication, have fun with 1v1 broodwar? An AI with difficulty settings could fix that.

That “fun thing” said above, leads to my last part of my argument. The majority of players cant or dont want to reach that level of dedication. They just want to play the game and have a good time with it. This mindset is gamer mentality 1.01, so deal with it. “But muh new generation lack the discipline to learn such a game”, “But yur mentality is wrong; train more(then proceed to spam links from liquepedia)”, “But its such a complex game and a AI cant be made”, “People only care for muh ranked games”, “go to X discord channel and find train buddies” etc. Those people with those arguments can really go F themselves because these idiots chased away the newcomers with their bull arguements. They have been into this game since the early years and cannot understand how a new player feels or what has to deal with by entering this game now. Sure there is so many material online to help them, but the skill gap is bigger now than it used to and RTS are irrelevant as a genre. Also, there are so many alternatives to choose from nowadays and its easy to give up broodwar and find something else to put your dedication into, since broodwar has nothing as a game to give them to pick up the pace. Broodwar remaster should not rely so heavily on external sources to help a newcomer to learn. Hell, I dont want to install fckn discord, and I dont have the time or the mood to catch in game friendships and rely on them in order to git gud or have a decent match. Also using discord to find a player really defeats the ranked mode existence, so its another loss point for the Broodwar Remastered team.

In the end, Blizzard can make a new AI for this game. Its inexcusable to have SC2 to have a deepmind AI, and Broodwar to have jacks-hit. BWAPI is fine for the modding community, but I dont think the fans can make a true competitive AI for this game. Even if they can, they should focus their energy into making something that could earn money for their hard work. Blizzard passively waiting from the community to make their work done for them and keep the game once again relevant (like they do all these years after SC2), is just UNGRATEFUL and LAZY.

Tl; dr AN OFFICIAL AI IS THE CORNERSTONE OF PRESERVING THE GAME AND GIVING ACCESS TO THE CASUAL FANS. END OF STORY.

I just hope the dev team pays attention to our pleas about a new AI and actually give us some sort of response. The rest who think a new AI is just a waste of time, come at me with your arguments. Im ready

3 Likes
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That is amazing what you wrote there !!!, loved it, so to the point on how I and other people feel about AI and the future, so glad you read this i just hope this thread comes to a serious level worthily enough of a serious answer, you are a helping so much in that regard, if i could PIN answers inside my own thread jesus.

The only thing i can are some bullet point trying to add to your already rich arguments:

  • AI in BWAPI cant “theoretically” be managed in such a way to learn to fit an specific objective, so lets say we want to create a 1400 MMR Bot, we could feed him with 1400 replays, lets say we want it to create a BOT called “Bisu” we feed it a lot of Bisu`s replays.
    Personally i give the AI course in the Game Design degree at my local University, and i know for a fact that BWAPI can be handle to work at this level, the DEVS just need to get its hands dirty, the solution for better AI is supervised machine learning.
    Otherwise, Lets the community make it for you, just make it official.

  • AI setting or “dummies AI” is more on the lane of what @Masterpanos is saying, is about time for us to get a well deserved in engine update for the AI, is it really such a complicated or expensive implementation that a Billon dollar company with a million people waiting in line to be hired cant tackle?, i call here laziness more than greed.
    But the functionality of a Build on AI only means that in a near future BLIZZARD cloud servers will give people A COMPREHENSIVE REASON TO BUY IT so BLIZZARD needs to think in the future, Cloud gaming today is something relatively new, but in 2 years it will jump to be a very profitable market: Who on its right mind is going to play a game where the AI us stuck at 1998 levels, hell, as said above even the community has given you an API to work with and create such bots, WE JUST NEED THE INTERFACE

  • AI laddering is something not talked enough in the BWAPI and AI thread i have created of follow since the release of SC:RM, Panos understands this very well also: STARCRAFT REMASTERED LADDER IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET HUMANS DRIVE YOUR GAME LEARNING CURVE, imagine a world where kids want to learn Tenis but they can only play people that are already at Tournament level, AI laddering is something that needs to be implemented right away to bring back relevance to the game.

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Regarding the permanence of servers and updates, that wont stop until people stop playing it, and that wont happen. Specially say thanks to the Korean server for this, saw 10,000+ the other day. The niche is small but wont go anywhere, are very passionate about it and wont stop. I say small using a worldwide scope but individually for me that is a lot for a game with this age and quite an accomplishment.

Sure a foccus on an alternative would be nice but is not so urgent, I seriously doubt they would shutdown StarCraft servers while Blizzard exists, even for historical purposes.

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Is not urgent quite yet, but lets jump to 2021, imagine you being there without this open petition done around the time when we can influence the development of the software.

The time is now, otherwise we will be struck by the news that there is nothing we can do to change our beloved game.

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Not really, the more time passes the cheaper it will be to mantain the servers for a game like StarCraft, so there is really not need to turn them off unless the company shuts down, and that wont happen any time soon.

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Have you ever wondered why Team Match Making “might” be something they will never give us??..well think again very hard.

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OP, I have to say you’ve earned a like from me just for this section alone. :slight_smile: And the thread title.

It’s good to see someone else who’s concerned about preserving the game.

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this is good i want to play Stacraft classic for many years to come and is true: how are we going to play online if people cant make servers like iccup again? have the blizzard people talked about this???

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Of course not.

As far as we know they fully intend to make the game inaccessible once the service is gone just like every other game company that’s ever shut down a service.

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But what i BLIZZARD closes? that is what i mean, can we get a mean to download the whole experience to the hard drive?..i know is dumb, but sometimes i wonder.

I guess it applies to all “new age games” that they are inevitable attached to the cloud somehow, but this being a game created in 1998, even if remastered, i wonder if they could once deprecated (i calculate 2021?) give us everything for free in a portable version.

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I disagree with this, team match making will happen. After all is their priority 1 acording to their to do list, so there should be a lot of work already done. Are you saying that sticky is lying?

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It was already promised to be done before the end of 2018, then it was priority one in their 2019 to-do list. Seems to be a pattern here, don’t you think?

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Team Match Making is indeed priority 1, but for what i understood it will take time, maybe even to the second half of next year, it would be smart to release SOMETHING, maybe a test module of TMM, on the first half of next year AND GIVE US SOMETHING FOR XMAS, ANYTHING GOOD.