Starcraft Remastered $7.49 @ Blizzard righnao

[tp4tissue]

Get'cho childhood education... 

They got the Cartooned (skin) bundle for $14.95..  It's fun looking, buh not an essential.

[yui]

i though starcraft was free at one point? and often remastered will alter to add lootboxes, microtransactions, 5 moneys and dlc nowadays...

[tp4tissue]

This is a gud' remaster, no loot boxes (yet).

[Kavik]

I just bought the C&C remaster, even though I have the regular versions already, mainly to play multiplayer without weird workarounds. I didn't even know a Starcraft remaster exists.

I can't believe C&C remastered is 35 GB when the original three games plus expansions are probably under 1 GB combined.

[tp4tissue]

I just bought the C&C remaster

the $12.99 on steam ?

[Kavik]

I just bought the C&C remaster

the $12.99 on steam ?

Yeah, that's the one.

I already played through the campaign on C&C earlier this year, so I probably won't touch that, but I'd planned on playing through Red Alert next anyway.

I just logged into the Battle.net client, and, under StarCraft, it says "play now" and "buy remastered". Apparently, I already have the old version for free; I just need to install it (6.55 GB, jeez). Given my likelihood of playing it, I may just stick with the original.

[absyrd]

And why do I want a remastered version?

[tp4tissue]

And why do I want a remastered version?

widescreen support, real time lighting (2D), Brand new 4K sprites (fully redone all units).

[yui]

I just bought the C&C remaster, even though I have the regular versions already, mainly to play multiplayer without weird workarounds. I didn't even know a Starcraft remaster exists.

I can't believe C&C remastered is 35 GB when the original three games plus expansions are probably under 1 GB combined.

it was a pretty huge game at the time, the main game is 600 MB and with extensions i think it got up to 1.2GB although seeing OpenRA and remastered i do not know where the extra 34GB comes from maybe the better fmv and audio?

[Kavik]

I just bought the C&C remaster, even though I have the regular versions already, mainly to play multiplayer without weird workarounds. I didn't even know a Starcraft remaster exists.

I can't believe C&C remastered is 35 GB when the original three games plus expansions are probably under 1 GB combined.

it was a pretty huge game at the time, the main game is 600 MB and with extensions i think it got up to 1.2GB although seeing OpenRA and remastered i do not know where the extra 34GB comes from maybe the better fmv and audio?

The music has been rerecorded, not just remastered from the originals as I understand it, so I wouldn't be surprised if that takes up a chunk of the space. The FMV quality is actually disappointing. I know it's not possible to add detail that's not there, but it just looks like the original video with the pixelation smoothed out to me. And there's some pretty terrible deinterlacing in the opening cinematic; maybe that was there in the original *shrug*. It's disappointing that the original source video wasn't used instead of the compressed game version. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that was my initial impression. Regardless, it probably takes up some space as well.

[tp4tissue]

I believed they used the original composites. I don't think they would have archived the original footage.

Even if they did though, remastering that alone would be a huge project and it wouldn't jive with the original CGI either.  The softness blends into the old low-fi stuff.  If you took ultra high res scans, then pasted it over that 640x480 Cgi, it'd look really uncanny.

I think in the trailer they said they used AI-upscalers.

[yui]

The music has been rerecorded, not just remastered from the originals as I understand it, so I wouldn't be surprised if that takes up a chunk of the space. The FMV quality is actually disappointing. I know it's not possible to add detail that's not there, but it just looks like the original video with the pixelation smoothed out to me. And there's some pretty terrible deinterlacing in the opening cinematic; maybe that was there in the original *shrug*. It's disappointing that the original source video wasn't used instead of the compressed game version. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but that was my initial impression. Regardless, it probably takes up some space as well.

from what i have seen pre-release, they lost most of the originals and so used one of the console version as source for the remastered, although not all cinematic were included in that console version and so some comes from pc, where the fmv quality was even worse.

[Sintpinty]

Downwell was 1.08

[Shapey Fiend]

Bought the C&C Remaster I'm not sure the game has dated that sympathetically I'm finding it hard going. The AI upscaled video looks terrible (although it's not like that particularly bothers me) It'd be better just pixelated IMO. It reminds me of the 00's game emulators that had a 2xSal filter on them smooth the pixel art.

I'd kill for a Total Annihilation remaster. There are a couple of community patches and I've got it working in multiplayer but the recorder with the extra quality of life features isn't working. Wargaming bought the license 5 years ago and they've done absolutely zip with it.

RTS has to be the most dead genre around these days. There's just MOBAs and the occasional low budget fare like Ashes of the Singularity or Rusted Warfare that feel a bit insubstantial.

Downwell is amazing and it's often on sale for a couple of bucks.

[yui]

Bought the C&C Remaster I'm not sure the game has dated that sympathetically I'm finding it hard going. The AI upscaled video looks terrible (although it's not like that particularly bothers me) It'd be better just pixelated IMO. It reminds me of the 00's game emulators that had a 2xSal filter on them smooth the pixel art.

the original is not even that pixelated, it is just very compressed, so it will look bad no matter what, and yeah the old C&C were rather hard compared to modern games, they did not care as much that grandma would not buy and play the game

[Shapey Fiend]

Ah yeah I meant hard going in the Irish sense that it isn't very appealing. It's not too difficult, so far. Haven't played through the campaign in 25 years but I definitely remember some really tough missions later on where you've to get a limited number of units through a long section at the start before you can start building.

[Kavik]

Ah yeah I meant hard going in the Irish sense that it isn't very appealing. It's not too difficult, so far. Haven't played through the campaign in 25 years but I definitely remember some really tough missions later on where you've to get a limited number of units through a long section at the start before you can start building.

It would be hard if the AI weren't so limited. All you have to do to beat the hard campaign missions is build walls around your base because the AI doesn't know how to shoot the walls for some reason. You can incrementally build the walls farther and farther from your base until you've cut off most of the map from the enemy. Sometimes getting to that point is rather tuff though. IIRC you can also bait the enemy bombers by continually building low value structures at the top of the base because they attack the northern most target first.

[yui]

Ah yeah I meant hard going in the Irish sense that it isn't very appealing. It's not too difficult, so far. Haven't played through the campaign in 25 years but I definitely remember some really tough missions later on where you've to get a limited number of units through a long section at the start before you can start building.

It would be hard if the AI weren't so limited. All you have to do to beat the hard campaign missions is build walls around your base because the AI doesn't know how to shoot the walls for some reason. You can incrementally build the walls farther and farther from your base until you've cut off most of the map from the enemy. Sometimes getting to that point is rather tuff though. IIRC you can also bait the enemy bombers by continually building low value structures at the top of the base because they attack the northern most target first.

well yeah most old games have exploits and using them will often make the game easier but you are not the spiffing brit, you can play games without exploiting the hell, can't you?

[tp4tissue]

Ah yeah I meant hard going in the Irish sense that it isn't very appealing. It's not too difficult, so far. Haven't played through the campaign in 25 years but I definitely remember some really tough missions later on where you've to get a limited number of units through a long section at the start before you can start building.

It would be hard if the AI weren't so limited. All you have to do to beat the hard campaign missions is build walls around your base because the AI doesn't know how to shoot the walls for some reason. You can incrementally build the walls farther and farther from your base until you've cut off most of the map from the enemy. Sometimes getting to that point is rather tuff though. IIRC you can also bait the enemy bombers by continually building low value structures at the top of the base because they attack the northern most target first.

well yeah most old games have exploits and using them will often make the game easier but you are not the spiffing brit, you can play games without exploiting the hell, can't you?

You play the game however you like. There's no Game-Police.   But there is such a thing as Creator's Intent.

This is also why COLOR-Calibration is SO IMPORTANT..   You're all Missing-Out on the Gud'stuff  if you dun'haz Calibration.

A basic $150 i1display studio is the greatest computer tool for ALL USERS Types,  from programmers to typists to gamers to videographers.

wait for the holiday sale when they go for ~$100

The slightly faster probe i1dis-PRO, goes for $240 normal price, seen at $150 on sale (rare pricing).
 

[yui]

tp we are talking about games from 30 years ago meant to run on old CRT, if you really want to play it how it was intended go buy a top of the line sony CRT monitor but calibration will not do much with the amount of compression there was back then, if you have 8 bit colors your 32 bit screen is a bit wasted, isn't it?
i do agree with you that if you care about that on more modern games calibration is nice, and for content creators it is a must have, but for old games it is a waste of time, the same can be said of music, i pretty much always use monitor grade headphones (very flat response) with an equalizer to tailor my listening experience, the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder like some would say, some rather experience it their way

[tp4tissue]

tp we are talking about games from 30 years ago meant to run on old CRT, if you really want to play it how it was intended go buy a top of the line sony CRT monitor but calibration will not do much with the amount of compression there was back then, if you have 8 bit colors your 32 bit screen is a bit wasted, isn't it?
i do agree with you that if you care about that on more modern games calibration is nice, and for content creators it is a must have, but for old games it is a waste of time, the same can be said of music, i pretty much always use monitor grade headphones (very flat response) with an equalizer to tailor my listening experience, the beauty is in the eyes of the beholder like some would say, some rather experience it their way

Many old games color graded for CRTs would be using near zero black points (~ 0.03-0.05 nits), which means to render the DARK-Scenes of those games on a flat panel you really need an OLED.  CRT has blooming and degraded contrast on bright scenes, that is unique to CRTs and Projectors, so that can not be replicated on flat panel.  But in general, it won't look bad.

The critical part is to extract as much Black detail as possible as this Accurate Contrast is what the Human visual system uses to Establish Visual Geometric Context, Depth/Distance.

On ANY display technology, Calibration gives you as much Black detail as the device allows.  THAT is universally BETTER than not having it.

So even in the case of Old CRT games played on Flat panels,  Calibrated is better.