The Original StarCraft Is Free from Today

[Megalith]

As hinted during the StarCraft remaster announcement, Blizzard is now letting you grab a copy of the original hit free of charge. The forum thread would suggest that the current build has its fair share of problems, but the 1.18 patch that should release today or tomorrow should clear any outstanding issues up.

Most people already own a copy of the original StarCraft. But if you don't, or you're looking for some old-school RTS action, the original game is available right now. StarCraft will be officially free once patch 1.18 drops, a move made by Blizzard ahead of the release of StarCraft Remastered in the winter. The patch is expected either today or early tomorrow, but for now the developer has made a build available for the game's public test server, which you can download from the Battle.net forums. You'll need to make a PTR account if you want to play StarCraft 1.18 online, but the campaign can be enjoyed without any such hassles.

 

[Teenyman45]

The game that made me stop playing RTS because I got so sick of my infantry parking themselves in front of my vehicles and absolutely refusing to march forward while under fire.

 

[Master_shake_]

already got the discs from 1998 both the game and the expansion.

 

[scojer]

already got the discs from 1998 both the game and the expansion.

Me too! I was just going through my box of computer junk and came across it. Though rather than pop the disc in and install, I might just download it instead.

 

[Nenu]

I'm clearly delinquent, I havent even seen this game lol.
Very busy period in my life at its release.
I guess I'll grab it after the patch drops, cheers!

 

[Bandalo]

Nostalgia aside, it's hard to go back to playing this game after playing any of the more recent RTS styles...

 

[ir0nw0lf]

"Starcraft+1.18+PTR+1202.zip" is 1.6 GB and shows v1.18 on the main menu screen.

 

[NoOther]

The game that made me stop playing RTS because I got so sick of my infantry parking themselves in front of my vehicles and absolutely refusing to march forward while under fire.

I'm sure your infrantry just wanted to quit after getting tired of your poor placement of them, and lack of moving the injured to the rear to get medical assistance.

 

[Merc1138]

The game that made me stop playing RTS because I got so sick of my infantry parking themselves in front of my vehicles and absolutely refusing to march forward while under fire.

So you quit playing RTS games because you couldn't be bothered to micro? That's like... half the gameplay lol.

 

[Teenyman45]

I'm sure your infrantry just wanted to quit after getting tired of your poor placement of them, and lack of moving the injured to the rear to get medical assistance.

Placed one medic in each squad to heal on the march and to heal while the units were supposed to be fighting. Retreat commands were somehow interpreted as spin around in circles.

So you quit playing RTS games because you couldn't be bothered to micro? That's like... half the gameplay lol.

I was micro-ing and the units still would not move or would move 30-50 pixels and stop. I got tired of micro-ing dozens upon dozens of units over and over again. The worst was any map that had any sort of bottleneck, no matter what commands (usually to lead through the bottleneck with heavy vehicles when playing Terran and the equivalent with Zerg) I gave it would try to re-position infantry at the front who would STOP at the edge of their firing range, then not readily move, and do whatever it took to keep my units with actual firepower outside of their own firing range. Once I got air power in the campaign this was mitigated by switching almost exclusively to air units and just using swarm tactics, even with the Terran and Protoss air units because micor mangament of move here and fire was so often ignored.

What made me stop was that in one of the expansion pack campaign missions where you have a hero and some infantry I clicked for the units to move as a group... which of course failed. So I started clicking individual units to try to move in something like a parallel squad formation and exit the room. This sort of worked while the squads were heading up through the exit until two units spontaneously peeled off. One right right and the other went left both walking into the walls. The two then turned and went south for a bit, turned again to face the center of the room, walked towards the center and then started firing on each other while refusing to acknowledge ANY other commands. So I opened up the task manager did a force shutdown of the game and uninstalled it.

Never really had any problems like this with Command & Conquer (except the first GDI demolition stage in the original game) or other RTS games back when I played them in the 90's to early 2000s. The Starcraft battlebox I bought several years later killed the genre for me.

 

[NoOther]

Placed one medic in each squad to heal on the march and to heal while the units were supposed to be fighting. Retreat commands were somehow interpreted as spin around in circles.



I was micro-ing and the units still would not move or would move 30-50 pixels and stop. I got tired of micro-ing dozens upon dozens of units over and over again. The worst was any map that had any sort of bottleneck, no matter what commands (usually to lead through the bottleneck with heavy vehicles when playing Terran and the equivalent with Zerg) I gave it would try to re-position infantry at the front who would STOP at the edge of their firing range, then not readily move, and do whatever it took to keep my units with actual firepower outside of their own firing range. Once I got air power in the campaign this was mitigated by switching almost exclusively to air units and just using swarm tactics, even with the Terran and Protoss air units because micor mangament of move here and fire was so often ignored.

What made me stop was that in one of the expansion pack campaign missions where you have a hero and some infantry I clicked for the units to move as a group... which of course failed. So I started clicking individual units to try to move in something like a parallel squad formation and exit the room. This sort of worked while the squads were heading up through the exit until two units spontaneously peeled off. One right right and the other went left both walking into the walls. The two then turned and went south for a bit, turned again to face the center of the room, walked towards the center and then started firing on each other while refusing to acknowledge ANY other commands. So I opened up the task manager did a force shutdown of the game and uninstalled it.

Never really had any problems like this with Command & Conquer (except the first GDI demolition stage in the original game) or other RTS games back when I played them in the 90's to early 2000s. The Starcraft battlebox I bought several years later killed the genre for me.

Sounds like you weren't really paying attention to the map constraints and the pathing needed. I actually found SC far better with unit control than C&C. I find many times people rage quite because a game doesn't work exactly like some other game they played the crap out of and were used to. I had a friend that was a top rated player in AOE2, but sucked in most other RTS games. He wouldn't play any other RTS other than AOE2. He still plays that game to this day.

 

[Teenyman45]

Paying attention like it's a wide open field and I want to use a high speed unit to fake scout, draw aggro, and kite opponents into a trap outside of visual range but the unit only accepts my commands maybe half the time but where precise control was, unfortunately, needed. Or having to thread units through a ravine so of course units just freeze and refuse to move forward or spin around and around while taking fire when the campaign map is specifically set up with the bottleneck. Would my long range units actually respond to commands to park at just short of maximum firing and pound on the enemy emplacements? Oh no, they would fire once or twice (maybe) and then charge at full speed in whatever manner would bring them directly to the enemy and of course ignore any command to fire while moving or retreat. Never had these sorts of issues in any other games else except with certain hero units in some of them.

I was excellent at West End Games and solid in most other RTS games that I tried. I doubt I'd be anywhere as good now since my cpm rate is almost certainly much, much lower than it used to be.

By the time I finally got around to Starcraft in the mid-late 2000's to try the campaign mode the field in my area was LAN Starcraft, LAN Starcraft, and more LAN Starcraft... so I stopped. I tried playing Sins of a Solar Empire a while back and it was both easy and boring.

 

[NoOther]

Paying attention like it's a wide open field and I want to use a high speed unit to fake scout, draw aggro, and kite opponents into a trap outside of visual range but the unit only accepts my commands maybe half the time but where precise control was, unfortunately, needed. Or having to thread units through a ravine so of course units just freeze and refuse to move forward or spin around and around while taking fire when the campaign map is specifically set up with the bottleneck. Would my long range units actually respond to commands to park at just short of maximum firing and pound on the enemy emplacements? Oh no, they would fire once or twice (maybe) and then charge at full speed in whatever manner would bring them directly to the enemy and of course ignore any command to fire while moving or retreat. Never had these sorts of issues in any other games else except with certain hero units in some of them.

I was excellent at West End Games and solid in most other RTS games that I tried. I doubt I'd be anywhere as good now since my cpm rate is almost certainly much, much lower than it used to be.

By the time I finally got around to Starcraft in the mid-late 2000's to try the campaign mode the field in my area was LAN Starcraft, LAN Starcraft, and more LAN Starcraft... so I stopped. I tried playing Sins of a Solar Empire a while back and it was both easy and boring.

I've never had issues with precise controls of units in SC, not sure what your issue is. I think your issues is more your control. There is a reason SC is still one of the largest games for eSport, it's because professionals can use exact control and command of units, and its very well balanced. A lot of these issues you are talking about, have never been an issue for me. When I tell air units to do a move attack, they move into range and attack from their longest range. They do not "charge at full speed in whatever manner" unless I specifically tell them to. There are situations where it could seem like that if you are not paying attention and reacting properly to enemy movements. If you have told your units to attack something and then the enemy moves units under your target, it isn't going to automatically respond to back off. Also not sure what cpm is supposed to be, most people use the term APM.

 

[Merc1138]

Placed one medic in each squad to heal on the march and to heal while the units were supposed to be fighting. Retreat commands were somehow interpreted as spin around in circles.



I was micro-ing and the units still would not move or would move 30-50 pixels and stop. I got tired of micro-ing dozens upon dozens of units over and over again. The worst was any map that had any sort of bottleneck, no matter what commands (usually to lead through the bottleneck with heavy vehicles when playing Terran and the equivalent with Zerg) I gave it would try to re-position infantry at the front who would STOP at the edge of their firing range, then not readily move, and do whatever it took to keep my units with actual firepower outside of their own firing range. Once I got air power in the campaign this was mitigated by switching almost exclusively to air units and just using swarm tactics, even with the Terran and Protoss air units because micor mangament of move here and fire was so often ignored.

What made me stop was that in one of the expansion pack campaign missions where you have a hero and some infantry I clicked for the units to move as a group... which of course failed. So I started clicking individual units to try to move in something like a parallel squad formation and exit the room. This sort of worked while the squads were heading up through the exit until two units spontaneously peeled off. One right right and the other went left both walking into the walls. The two then turned and went south for a bit, turned again to face the center of the room, walked towards the center and then started firing on each other while refusing to acknowledge ANY other commands. So I opened up the task manager did a force shutdown of the game and uninstalled it.

Never really had any problems like this with Command & Conquer (except the first GDI demolition stage in the original game) or other RTS games back when I played them in the 90's to early 2000s. The Starcraft battlebox I bought several years later killed the genre for me.

Well of course they're going to stop at the edge of their firing range if you're issuing move-attack commands instead of separate move and stop commands.

So no, you were clearly NOT micro-ing your units, and relied on click destinations for groups at the most. If anything your comparison to Westwood's C&C series just furthers this point, because their AI was god awful and would ignore specific commands and want to do their own thing, which dramatically hindered micromanagement of units.

What you needed to do, was force a MOVE command(not move-attack) to your infantry units, force a MOVE command to your heavy vehicle units, and then STOP them both when they were at the positions you wanted(or the destination) so they could attack.

And your own units firing on eachother while ignoring your commands? That's called Mind Control, something Protoss units will do to opponents(I'm assuming this wasn't infested terrans you didn't bother to notice).

TL;DR: You weren't actually micromanaging anything, you simply assumed what you were doing was micromanagement, it was not.

 

[horrorshow]

*registered my SC keys on battle.net AGES ago

If they would just put Warcraft III: FT on Bnet2.0 to cut down on the cheating, fix several audio issues (unless you're play using EAX), and offer more AA/resolution options.... I'd gladly hand Blizzard 40 bucks without hesitation.

 

[Teenyman45]

Well of course they're going to stop at the edge of their firing range if you're issuing move-attack commands instead of separate move and stop commands.

So no, you were clearly NOT micro-ing your units, and relied on click destinations for groups at the most. If anything your comparison to Westwood's C&C series just furthers this point, because their AI was god awful and would ignore specific commands and want to do their own thing, which dramatically hindered micromanagement of units.

What you needed to do, was force a MOVE command(not move-attack) to your infantry units, force a MOVE command to your heavy vehicle units, and then STOP them both when they were at the positions you wanted(or the destination) so they could attack.

And your own units firing on eachother while ignoring your commands? That's called Mind Control, something Protoss units will do to opponents(I'm assuming this wasn't infested terrans you didn't bother to notice).

TL;DR: You weren't actually micromanaging anything, you simply assumed what you were doing was micromanagement, it was not.

I didn't rely on the AI in Westwood games I would click the five man squads of infantry (usually three gunners and two grenadiers or 1 grenade 1 missile) or individual tanks. Scouting and/or Kiting with a GDI car or Nod buggy / stealth tank actually worked. The hero with explosives and the sniper rifle was just awful however because the AI kept try to get the unit to walk the perimiter of the buildings after placing charges instead of running the hell away.

The Terrans firing on each other event happened in an expansion pack mission where the female hero leads about a dozen marines through a former Terran base and it happened while there were no opposing units anywhere near by. I played those sorts of missions the same way I played isometric TBS games, inch forward to engage one or two enemies at a time then heal.

My basic framework for moving while under fire was. 1) Click individual unit; 2) select open space some pixels away in desired direction and use move and fire command or even just try to force a move; 3) hear acknowledgement of command; 4) see unit not move in commanded direction or just as likely freeze; and 5) repeat steps 1-3 until 4 finally does not occur and unit moves where it is supposed to, preferably while firing. Do this while frantically clicking on each unit in whatever mixed-arms group I had because selecting several units and assigning them a hotkey was even more hopeless for anything except cross-map travel is disorganized fashion. Air units tended to respond better but with far less precision than I had in any other RTS. For whatever reason I could not get units to follow properly (I got the same feeling as when the person in front of me refuses to move when the light turns green or approach within 20 of the posted limit) so I stopped playing. Since the general field was LAN Starcraft and I never cleared the expansion pack I dropped out of RTS and never really went back.

 

[lcpiper]

Well, now if Blizzard would just remaster D2

 

[Merc1138]

I didn't rely on the AI in Westwood games I would click the five man squads of infantry (usually three gunners and two grenadiers or 1 grenade 1 missile) or individual tanks. Scouting and/or Kiting with a GDI car or Nod buggy / stealth tank actually worked. The hero with explosives and the sniper rifle was just awful however because the AI kept try to get the unit to walk the perimiter of the buildings after placing charges instead of running the hell away.

The Terrans firing on each other event happened in an expansion pack mission where the female hero leads about a dozen marines through a former Terran base and it happened while there were no opposing units anywhere near by. I played those sorts of missions the same way I played isometric TBS games, inch forward to engage one or two enemies at a time then heal.

My basic framework for moving while under fire was. 1) Click individual unit; 2) select open space some pixels away in desired direction and use move and fire command or even just try to force a move; 3) hear acknowledgement of command; 4) see unit not move in commanded direction or just as likely freeze; and 5) repeat steps 1-3 until 4 finally does not occur and unit moves where it is supposed to, preferably while firing. Do this while frantically clicking on each unit in whatever mixed-arms group I had because selecting several units and assigning them a hotkey was even more hopeless for anything except cross-map travel is disorganized fashion. Air units tended to respond better but with far less precision than I had in any other RTS. For whatever reason I could not get units to follow properly (I got the same feeling as when the person in front of me refuses to move when the light turns green or approach within 20 of the posted limit) so I stopped playing. Since the general field was LAN Starcraft and I never cleared the expansion pack I dropped out of RTS and never really went back.

... and there you go again talking about clicking. You cannot micromanage units in starcraft simply by clicking locations on the map unless you are clicking on the move and stop buttons on the menu, which would be far easier to just use the keyboard shortcuts for. Everything you have described sounds exactly like you were not micromanaging anything and ignored a crucial part of the control scheme for the entire game. You also bring up the move and fire command, again that is not micromanagement of units, if anything that's probably the worst method of moving units around in combat.

 

[Teenyman45]

It's been long enough that I had to look up the keyboard commands for Starcraft. To clarify my earlier comment, that meant click unit then hit the "A" key at the desired point I would click on the the map or sometimes unit. That is why I typed move and fire.

 

[Merc1138]

It's been long enough that I had to look up the keyboard commands for Starcraft. To clarify my earlier comment, that meant click unit then hit the "A" key at the desired point I would click on the the map or sometimes unit. That is why I typed move and fire.

Yes, and A is Attack/Move-Attack.

You should have been using M for move, S for stop, and H for hold. I can understand if you didn't use keyboard shortcuts for unit production/building contruction and clicked through the menu, but unit control is the absolute basics as far as effectively being able to control units in combat in a blizzard RTS. You apparently ignored half of the control scheme for the game, and then complained about how units weren't acting how you wanted them to, when you weren't using the keys to actually issue those commands.

Again, you were NOT micromanaging. This is like playing an FPS, and complaining about movement while you didn't bother to hit the jump and crouch keys.

 

[Merc1138]

Look, this is an example of micromanagement for SC2, which would also apply to SC1. This is how you get terran marines shooting while on the move, it's a basic thing to do, and frankly essential as demonstrated in the video. Granted, it's not quite the same issue you described with units blocking eachother, but this sort of thing is basic in understanding unit movement and overcoming it while maintaining the effectiveness of those units.

 

[jardows]

Just grabbed it and played a mission. I've gotten spoiled by high resolution screens! I think I'll wait until the HD remaster comes out to play any more.

 

[Burticus]

Yeah I have the cd on my shelf that SOMEONE managed to get nail polish remover on and ruined it. I'm looking at you... dead kitty cat. But I still have the CD key.

 

[STrAYeR]

The cutscenes were good in the second game and that's about it. The original is still one of the best games I've ever played. I was playing Doom 2016 the other day and and found one of those classic levels. Even with all the pixels it was still better than the new game. I just gave a sigh when I saw it and and felt at home.

 

[chenw]

Look, this is an example of micromanagement for SC2, which would also apply to SC1. This is how you get terran marines shooting while on the move, it's a basic thing to do, and frankly essential as demonstrated in the video. Granted, it's not quite the same issue you described with units blocking eachother, but this sort of thing is basic in understanding unit movement and overcoming it while maintaining the effectiveness of those units.

This kind of micro requires is main reason why I only play SC for the campaign, never online. Far too much effort, and I don't really find it fun rapidly clicking on the map just to get my units moving.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

SCORESVILLE!
I don't care about playing online but SC is my all time favorite RTS; even with it's limitations it is still fun.

 

[Dr. Righteous]

The low resolution is killing me.
I seem to recall some kind of screen resolution hack for StarCraft.
Can someone point me the right direction?