Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm Cinematic & Blizzard All-Stars

[Vengeancekael]

Blizzard All-Stars News Eurogamer.net has recently had an interview with Blizzard's Chris Sigaty and several things have been revealed: Though not completely confirmed, Blizzard intends to release Blizzard All-Stars as a standalone game, rather than a Starcraft II mod as initially intended The gameplay shown at BlizzCon 2010 has been drastically changed and a lot of the ideas altered Blizzard wants to go for a more FTPish business model (comparable to League of Legends') and allow players to buy small things Chris Sigaty insists on the fact that Blizzard is actively working on the project and has not abandoned it. People were assuming that Blizzard All-Stars was canned after not hearing any news for almost 2 years. Check out the full coverage of the interview over at Eurogamer.net

 

[rulerofiron99]

Though not completely confirmed, Blizzard intends to release Blizzard All-Stars as a standalone game, rather than a Starcraft II mod as initially intended

Yay, I don't need to buy HotS anymore

 

[-Kobas-]

Really awesome, sc2 lovers will shit pants for sure )))

 

[Edhel-dur]

Really awesome, sc2 lovers will shit pants for sure )))

You make it sound like an affair.

Anyway, good graphics.

 

[Hemske]

Haha anyone else noticed Blizzard have trademarked "soonish". I find that hilarious.


And god blizzard's cinematics are awesome.

 

[Lordkoon]

And god blizzard's cinematics are awesome.

Yea, Deep-voiced bad-asses or 'slap me mistress'-kind of women owning someone every cinematic on every blizz game.


I am looking forward to the expansion, altho I am still mad at their strategy - 1 expansion at a time, prolonging the life of the game for another decade. But money is money...you gotta love it and have it.

 

[Blackhole]

Really awesome, sc2 lovers will shit pants for sure )))

You'd bet, I am all staying with HotS, preordered, got a 2nd beta key for an online friend that plays BNet melee, while I do like 60-70% melee, 30-40% mapmaking which is still not little on some days.

I know why they decided to move All Stars to a separate game - more money, not kiling all custom maps at SC2, i.e to avoid the situation that happened in War3 and dota. Even if there weren't gonna be list of maps all saying 'dota', it would attract all who play custom maps to go play AllStars than the custom maps.

 

[Rui]

I'm not sure if they don't end up killing it either way. A few days of custom games in SC2 and you grow tired of «Defend base against endless zerg» or TDs. The AoS types I've seen in SC2 are honestly poor, too, I have yet to find a rival to some of the maps I've seen in WarCraft III, despite Galaxy's supposed superiority.
Blizzard DOTA was an advantage because it'd finally bring new material — although I doubt it would have been enough, it would help modelers to not work 100% from scratch. On this regard, let's just hope they allow people to convert models in-between games like people have been doing with WoW models, if this map is really transitioning to be an individual game.

P.S. — Besides, we know that DotA is largely what has kept WC3 active.

 

[Orcnet]

if blizzard is amazingly doing well in the cinematics, I just hope there release for the WoW movie will end up as bad-ass as this

 

[Dr Super Good]

They subcontract. It is an independant studio doing the cinimatics. They are probably using the same for all their games.

 

[Edhel-dur]

I'm not sure if they don't end up killing it either way. A few days of custom games in SC2 and you grow tired of «Defend base against endless zerg» or TDs. The AoS types I've seen in SC2 are honestly poor, too, I have yet to find a rival to some of the maps I've seen in WarCraft III, despite Galaxy's supposed superiority.
Blizzard DOTA was an advantage because it'd finally bring new material — although I doubt it would have been enough, it would help modelers to not work 100% from scratch. On this regard, let's just hope they allow people to convert models in-between games like people have been doing with WoW models, if this map is really transitioning to be an individual game.

P.S. — Besides, we know that DotA is largely what has kept WC3 active.

Well give it time. Maps in Wc3 sky rocketed after TFT.

 

[I3lackDeath]

I don't get their change in character design...

In WoL, Infested Kerrigan displayed bright yellow/orange eyes, the very same ones Blizzard recycled for Diablo in Diablo 3 (you can clearly see that in the respective cinematic, Diablo ascending heaven).

In this cinematic, Infested Kerrigan features purple energy veins, aswell as a corresponding eye design.
Yes yes, it's a "dream", "vision" or "memory", whatever.
This change in character design doesn't make any sense.

 

[Radicool]

I don't get their change in character design...

In WoL, Infested Kerrigan displayed bright yellow/orange eyes, the very same ones Blizzard recycled for Diablo in Diablo 3 (you can clearly see that in the respective cinematic, Diablo ascending heaven).

In this cinematic, Infested Kerrigan features purple energy veins, aswell as a corresponding eye design.
Yes yes, it's a "dream", "vision" or "memory", whatever.
This change in character design doesn't make any sense.

I dont know the answer, but Blizzard's latest games seem to have soooooo much purple in them. Blues, etc go well with purple. Look at world of warcraft, Starcraft II, Starcraft 2 expansion. Purple everywhere.

The colour purple is involved in the release of the hormone "endorphins". This chemical causes you to feel happy. Chocolate releases endorphins and so does pysical activity like sports, etc.

Unfortunately there is not too much evidence to support this. I read it in a scientist magazine. One of my nerdy friends at school also mentioned it. And its perfectly logical that Blizzard would use purple to do this. A lot of other gaming companies use a fair bit of purple, League of Legends being one of them.

Of course certain colours are used to acheive certain effects. We all learn that in year 7 English. However, this cannot be the reason why purple is used to such a degree. Why not? Well purple is a soothing and relaxing colour. Its strange that a game involving mass war amonst alien races and the humans would have so much purple.

Pictures

I shouldn't need to explain how World of Warcraft adopts the purple design. Look at every night elf. The undead seem to have a tonne of it too. Draneis. So much clothing has stripes of purple if not all purple. The environment has varies levels of purple in it depending on location.

Nothing wrong with what they're doing. Thought it would be interesting to bring it up.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Well give it time. Maps in Wc3 sky rocketed after TFT.

TFT gave us the ability/buff editors and a whole bunch more in the trigger editor. IIRC, RoC didn't even have array variables.

Meanwhile, WoL has already given us all the toys.

HotS will add new content that's for sure, but W3 had so much more content - neutral creeps, items, hundreds of spells, heroes. SC2 has 3 races and some lame critters.

 

[Rui]

The data in itself is not the problem, but rather the lack of artistic resources to properly replicate it. The abundance in WC3 came mainly from the large variety of different creeps. I pointed, during the BETA, to how the lack of creeps in SC2 made it probable that we'd lack model variety. And so it was =|

 

[Blackhole]

In this cinematic, Infested Kerrigan features purple energy veins, aswell as a corresponding eye design.
Yes yes, it's a "dream", "vision" or "memory", whatever.
This change in character design doesn't make any sense.

I dont know the answer, but Blizzard's latest games seem to have soooooo much purple in them. Blues, etc go well with purple. Look at world of warcraft, Starcraft II, Starcraft 2 expansion. Purple everywhere.
.

How can you be complaining about such thing as colors? WoL was blue themed, for obvious reasons, now the Swarm and Kerrigan are purple because it is since SCBW and war3 where the Terrans/Humans are Blue team color player 2, the Zerg, undead are Purple team color, since Zerg and Undead have similarities, they decided to use purple theme as well..

The data in itself is not the problem, but rather the lack of artistic resources to properly replicate it. The abundance in WC3 came mainly from the large variety of different creeps. I pointed, during the BETA, to how the lack of creeps in SC2 made it probable that we'd lack model variety. And so it was =|

They can't make creeps in Starcraft 2... even for campaign the game is based on SC1 and how things were done there, you can't possibly be expecting to fight creeps in campaign, and since so and they aren ot used in melee for obvious reasons, they didnt add them.

What they could do is add war3 models to the game as a patch or SC2Mod but why? They give you the tools, they expect you to use them to import what you need,

SC2Mapster has people that have added some war3 models with improved polys and models to some packs.

When it comes to other futuristic models. when you can resize, SOPs and combine actors, they are the ones to use, so less custom models are needed.

 

[Orcnet]

I tried the comments and look what I found

 

[TheNisse]

Dhat trailer *jizzz* Blizzard always make awesome cinematics! Can't wait

 

[Dr Super Good]

Just to warn people, there is a 6 gigabyte pre-download for StarCraft II Wings of Liberty. This download is for an up and coming patch that prepares the game for the Heart of the Swarm expansion.

The update will require no less than 6 GigaBytes of data to be downloaded. It is carried out as an optional download after the launcher finishes downloading any main patches but before you start the game. If you start any Blizzard product (Diablo III, WoW, SC2) then the download is stopped (all progress made is retained and can be resumed by closing said game and restarting the launcher). You can check the progress of your download by going to "Info->Connection Information".

People using a capped connection should be careful to not exceed their monthly data allowance. Such people should consider watching fewer streams, streams at a lower quality or performing fewer downloads to compensate and avoid any penalties that occur when your cap is exceeded.

People with slow connections should try downloading it whenever their connection is under used. Be aware that downloading and playing any other multiplayer game at the same time will result in lag. Good times to download would be late at night (leave computer running) or when not actively using the internet (such as during dinner or watching TV). Whether you leave your computer running when no one competent is on the premises to do the download is your responsibility and I advise against it for safety reasons.

People using a standard broadband internet connection (DSL/ADSL without fibre backing) should consider turning off "Enable Peer-to-Peer Transfer" under "Options->Downloader Preferences" to increase downloader speed. This is because the uploading you are required to do in Peer-to-Peer mode will greatly decrease your maximum download speed. Some ISPs will also clamp your download and upload rate when running in Peer-to-Peer mode as part of their "fair usage" clause.