StarCraft II Official! (Pictures)

[Thalraxal]

Ooo!  It's glowy!

[Falchion]

Nice to see some update on that site... Someone was bound to call the cleanin' lady. XD

The only thing I have, and I emphasize on it, HAVE to protest against is the Battlecruiser's current design.  Even though I know Blizzard's working hard, this design, despite it's well planned front, sounds like it's been inspired on the Genesis Rising game, specially the cabin.  I mean, what happened to the nicey, blocky Battlecruiser?

Other than that, I liked the other things they've put.  Loved the character design, and the Void Seeker:  Now THAT is Blizzard.

[IskatuMesk]

The only thing wrong with the battlecruiser is that its proportions are utterly DREADFUL. There's nothing wrong with the single-player briefing battlecruiser, why do they keep using this abomination? It's so ugly.

[Lavarinth]

[imgwh 640x992]http://www.starcraft2.com/images/artwork/ss106.jpg[/imgwh]

Maybe it has something to do with this spiffy looking building.

[IskatuMesk]

IT'S THE TREE OF INIFUS

GOD DAMNIT CAIN I TOLD YOU TO STAY AWAY FROM TRISTRAM

[DrumsofWar]

It looks like Infested Raszagal high on paint chips.

[Thalraxal]

Creepy underground Dark Templar architecture?  We've been seeing a lot of that.

I quite liked the Singeplayer Storytelling preview thing.  The Evacuation of Agria sounds like fun, and I enjoyed seeing the design process behind it.  Nice to see a bit more of the singleplayer game too.  Also: those Protoss Statue Guardian things were cool.

[IskatuMesk]

[imgwh 640x480]http://starcraft2.com/images/screenshot ... -hires.jpg[/imgwh]

This is a really great screenshot to demonstrate what I was talking about, with the terrain textures.

The missile turrets, ghosts, corruptors ect all have clearly high-res textures and nice models. But the terran is extremely blurry and very low resolution, and the cliffs are seriously ugly as hell (Come on Blizzard, the platform cliffs look awesome, is dirt stuff seriously that hard?) It doesn't even look like that there's any normal mapping on the terrain at all while platform definitely does have it.

That's the main thing I hope they fix up before release. Because right now it reminds me a lot of Dawn of War, that had really nice units but utterly horrible wc3-esque terrain.

/e

Another really nice example.

[imgwh 640x480]http://starcraft2.com/images/screenshot ... -hires.jpg[/imgwh]

Look at the van full of loli and the road. Looks great, right? Then look at the dirt and grass. It has normal mapping, but it's so low resolution and so different quality compared to the road and units that it just looks awful.

Maybe Blizzard just hasn't hired a real texture artist for dirt yet.


[imgwh 640x362]http://starcraft2.com/images/screenshot ... -hires.jpg[/imgwh]
[imgwh 640x362]http://starcraft2.com/images/screenshot ... -hires.jpg[/imgwh]



And that is simply the best art I've seen out of sc2 period so far.

/e

LOL @ the self-censorship in their changeling story. Aahahahaha blizzard, what the hell are you doing?

[WB]

the only thing that wasn't censored in SC1 was "queen BITCH of the universe"

fuck and shit were censored.

[IskatuMesk]

Nah, pretty sure they say shit on the intro cinematic.

[Mucky]

LOL @ the self-censorship in their changeling story. Aahahahaha blizzard, what the hell are you doing?

I thought it was just because they were all rednecks.

"Brody, get the fekkin' tractor out here!"

[Pr0nogo]

Mesk, you have to realize that absolutely no one but you will notice anything about the textures until you point them out, mainly because they'll be too busy playing the game and also because in real-time (as in, not screenshots) everything looks better.

Also, most Battle.net players fail hard in the intellectual department, so why would they bother noticing a bunch of off textures?

[Lavarinth]

Well, I'm an art student so I noticed since Day 1.

[IskatuMesk]

Mesk, you have to realize that absolutely no one but you will notice anything about the textures until you point them out, mainly because they'll be too busy playing the game and also because in real-time (as in, not screenshots) everything looks better.

Also, most Battle.net players fail hard in the intellectual department, so why would they bother noticing a bunch of off textures?

Um. Anyone who makes campaigns or mods will notice immediately for starters. Anyone who has an eye for graphics, which is about 50% of the market (Note all of the people complaining that sc2's graphics are horrendously outdated because of how long it's been delayed, they're considerably more extreme than I am). People care more about graphics than gameplay these days, so it's pretty important.

The real-time comment is superfluous; you'll notice it even more in real-time because the terrain does not animate but units do.

[UntamedLoli]

Most of those people probobly won't have systems that can run it at full settings so everything looks like painted gravel anyways, at least so far it looks like there isn't some retarded filter going over all the textures and they can actually be sharp and detailed if someone wanted to change it.

EDIT: Those cliffs look like they have brown snow over the edges.