StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[Frozty]

That one only said he was heading to the bar then was cut off by Zeratul (fricking Zeratul!)

Cool shots. Can't wait to see more. However, if this the pace they're going, it's going be a long long time before we actually get to see even a beta.

However, Blizzard is notorious for giving us stuff that has already been in the works for a while.  So, most likely, they already have a good bit of the campaign stuff finished.  Or at least I hope so, or we will never see this game...

[UntamedLoli]

I'd rather wait than get a half assed effort like majority of the devs get away with.

[Frozty]

I'd rather wait than get a half assed effort like majority of the devs get away with.

QFT

[Maglok]

They said they were gonna show something really awesome of the single player game near the end of the year, so I got my hopes up for that.

@Doack: You of all people should understand the RTS game itself cannot have that many polies.

[Legion]

That one only said he was heading to the bar then was cut off by Zeratul (fricking Zeratul!)

Cool shots. Can't wait to see more. However, if this the pace they're going, it's going be a long long time before we actually get to see even a beta.

However, Blizzard is notorious for giving us stuff that has already been in the works for a while.  So, most likely, they already have a good bit of the campaign stuff finished.  Or at least I hope so, or we will never see this game...

True, and I'm not criticising them in any way. I'm sure that they're well on their way with this project. I'll be glad when most of the unit balancing / designing is finished. Then it's just a matter of pumping out the story they've had *cough* ten years to concoct.

[wibod]

@Doack: You of all people should understand the RTS game itself cannot have that many polies.

No engine is really limited by polies these days.

[UntamedLoli]

When it comes to a capable engine like SC2 you don't need more polys to make it look better.

[Maglok]

Uhm, excuse me if every unit in your RTS had the same amount of polies as the single player briefing environments, you engine might be able to handle it, but your computer won't. Especially since Blizzard is trying to make this playable by the majority of people.

[Anonymous]

Uhm, excuse me if every unit in your RTS had the same amount of polies as the single player briefing environments, you engine might be able to handle it, but your computer won't. Especially since Blizzard is trying to make this playable by the majority of people.

Even low-end machines can take huge numbers of polies. Polygons aren't a factor anymore. Now, shadows and shaders on the other hand, there's the real business.

@Doack: You of all people should understand the RTS game itself cannot have that many polies. Tongue

Actually, I of all people understand that an RTS with a properly-made engine, such as SC2 will most certainly have, and games like supreme commander already have, can take tremendous amounts of polygons while still performing very well for low-end computers. Well, this kind of technology has existed for a long time, but most people seem to think that an RTS has to be very low poly to work.

Let's talk Supreme Commander for a second. I've modded Supreme Commander and I've talked a lot about its engine with Pheo who happens to be pretty well versed with it. This engine can take any number of polies you throw at it. I threw in unoptimized 14k poly ships into the game and spawned hundreds with virtually no performance impact on what would today be considered a mid-range system. SC2's engine will be leaps and bounds ahead of supreme commander thanks to directx 10 and so on, so it's likely to perform even better.

Okay, let's take a step back to a familiar title - Warcraft 3. In my LoL AOS, I'm using an utterly retarded number of WoW models. These are pretty high poly for wc3, yes? Well, no performance impact from them. No sir. I did a lot of stress testing with this and triggers cause more of a performance impact. On a 9800 pro - that's ancient!

Right now, SC2's single player briefings are making the makers of Crysis cry black tears of sorrow. Judging by how well it ran at Blizzcon, and we might see more of it this year, it's not really pushing their hardware which to what I have heard is Dell XPS', to the limit. The thing with Blizzard titles however as you said is that they are extremely scalable. It's good to hear they are finally aiming to give top-end computers something worth the investment. Of course, it is very likely the single-player briefings and ingame are using the exact same rendering engine, and so it wouldn't be too hard for a prospective individual... Well, I don't know who, exactly... to make ingame graphics look just as good.

Anyways I'm more interested in the shaders and stuff of the SP than the raw polies. I can easily model low poly, now.

[UntamedLoli]

Just because there is higher settings doesn't mean everyone will be able to use them and I really doubt Blizzard was making SC2 with the performance of the latest generation in mind for the high end, you should have seen the Requiem forums with all the threads complaining their ghetto computers wouldn't run it because it required PS 2.0 which is every card above a RADEON 9600 (6 years old).

[Marco]

It's not even comparable to Crysis if you look at a few of the bigger screenshots - don't know where that came from.  It's pretty much standard graphical fare for a lot of games I see these days.  This level of detail requires good high resolution textures more than anything else.

The shots themselves are interesting, and I really can't complain about anything in them - its more than I expected.  I'm only concerned once again about it once again adding another time hurdle to those who might want to make their own custom campaign.  Hopefully people will just use some common sense about the standards they set and keep things on a level that they can handle.  What will really be nice is if there are some tools to make our own 'indoor' environment.  Though again, another time hurdle.  These ones done by professionals probably already take weeks of work.

[Anonymous]

Crysis looks like everyday garbage. This actually looks very good. Especially Raynor's face.

The only games I can think of that are comparable are all PS3 titles and UT3.

God CC is slow.

[AA7Dragoon]

I have to agree with Doack.  I believe I read somewhere the in-game cinematics are still using the engine.  So in theory, modified units and environment can be poly enhanced.  It's a unique function to the game itself.  I suppose Blizzard wanted to rely less on cinematics and pre-game briefings and more on these in-game cinematics.  WarCraft III's in-game cinematics were very effective because they created an entire community of people creating vivid story telling dramas.  Again, I have to restate the premise this could be a tremendous boon to the Campaign Creations community because not only can we create custom campaigns, but also create entire movies using the game's in-game cinematic engine.  Basically, it adds a whole new branch to the custom community as it did for WCIII.  In fact, WarCraft III's in-game cinematic movies was far more successful than its custom campaign fanbase.

[Lavarinth]

I have to agree with Doack.  I believe I read somewhere the in-game cinematics are still using the engine.  So in theory, modified units and environment can be poly enhanced.  It's a unique function to the game itself.  I suppose Blizzard wanted to rely less on cinematics and pre-game briefings and more on these in-game cinematics.  WarCraft III's in-game cinematics were very effective because they created an entire community of people creating vivid story telling dramas.  Again, I have to restate the premise this could be a tremendous boon to the Campaign Creations community because not only can we create custom campaigns, but also create entire moves using the game's in-game cinematic engine.  Basically, it adds a whole new branch to the custom community as it did for WCIII.  In fact, WarCraft III's in-game cinematic movies was far more successful than its custom campaign fanbase.

I concur with this extended statement. I also believe StarCraft II show an even greater rise for cinematic masterpieces with the increased flexability. I'm curious though- Will StarCraft II cinematic animations be done via keying in StarCraft's editor, or are they preanimated in Maya and imported and simply have "Play" hit to show an animation.

[wibod]

Crysis looks terrible, it has an extremely capable engine, but the people behind it cannot make textures and are terrible at optimization. iD did the same thing with Doom3. Half Life 2, despite being 4 years old still looks better then Crysis because it has actual art direction and shaders that don't look like someone shit all over a roll of plastic wrap.