StarCraft: Remastered

"Infinite fronts, infinite enemies."

- Tagline

StarCraft: Remastered (SCR) is an upcoming real-time strategy (RTS) computer game and remake of the 1998 game StarCraft and its expansion StarCraft: Brood War. It is designed to emulate the old gameplay with updated visuals, online support and additional gameplay support features. It is to be released in summer 2017.

Overview
StarCraft: Remastered is to be a remake of the best-selling StarCraft computer game. It will maintain the balance 1.18 for Brood War, as well as run in the old gameplay engine. Some bug fixes will be present, such as the sprite limitations preventing valkyries and carriers from shooting, but otherwise bugs that were molded into features will be maintained, and pathing will remain the same as in the original game.

The game will feature updated visuals, some polished versions of the old sprites, some built from the ground up based off of the ideas of the original artists and concept art. The campaign will be present as well, with comic-style interludes and briefings between missions. Classic cinematics will be rendered in 1080p, and gameplay will have 4k resolution. Dialogue and audio will be revised, the audio sample rate increased to 44kHz. Within the game, players can toggle between 4K resolution and the original's graphics settings for the visual effects.

Support for the game will include online matchmaking, an APM counter, anti-hack support, LAN support, and new chat channel functionality along with legacy chat channel and custom game lobbies. The game will be localized in 13 languages: English, German, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish (LatAm), Spanish (European), Polish, Italian, Russian, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese.

Classic StarCraft accounts will be able to be paired over to StarCraft: Remastered accounts. Unlike in StarCraft, the account will be paired forever and not be removed after 90 days.

Development
StarCraft: Remastered was made in response to the continued community surrounding StarCraft: Brood War even years after the release of StarCraft II. Development of the game was done for 18 months. StarCraft professional players were brought in to give their feedback, and they were resoundingly positive. The goal of the game was to not change the gameplay that made the professional scene what it was, but to also provide modern features to the classic game. "StarCraft hubs" were visited by the developers as well, in order to get fan feedback. Likewise, the "Wild West" atmosphere of the original was sought to be preserved.

The unit silhouettes were maintained because the developers wanted players to be able to immediately recognize them. Initially, there was negative reception among playtesters to the HD models. Visual effects were similarly given an overhaul. The original intent was to mimic the original effects as closely as possible, but it was discovered that the original effects weren't that impressive by modern standards. The original game effectively had to be reverse engineered, in order to extract the sprites. However, redoing any of the original's aesthetics was forbidden.

2,381 audio files are present in the game. Some of the sounds are entirely new, per the game's new language support. Others were retrieved from the original, and amplified using modern sound systems. In regards to sound mastering, guidelines were set in place: no tweaks would be made to just a few race, unit or scene sounds at a time. Every change should be made to groups of related sounds in unison. The sound team working on the project developed a technique to heighten the fidelity of the original sound files to 44 kHz without radically changing the sound mix. Another reason for not changing the sound was that the distinct sounds of the original act as cues for various units/structures.