Starcraft was the first game I played online. My friend and I would dial each other over a 56K modem. I remember wondering why he kept ending his chat messages with “:” and “)”.| /dev/nonsense
This is the second post of a two-part series on Starcraft and late-90s networking. Part 1 describes Starcraft’s many connection options. Configuring Starcraft networking in 1998 was an adventure. There were four different connection options (plus AppleTalk on Macintosh computers), each of which required specific software and hardware to function. How did anyone figure this stuff out? It turns out that the Starcraft CD included detailed support documentation. Today, this provides a glimpse o...| devnonsense.com
Writing about multiplayer Starcraft reminded me how strange networking was in 1998. I remember connecting a computer to a modem, which was connected to a phone line (many homes had a second phone number specifically for this purpose). The modem would dial a number and “talk” to a modem on the other end.1 Networking two computers over a phone line seems bizarre to me now. You could connect without an IP address, packet switching, routers, network address translation, or firewalls – all t...| devnonsense.com
I wanted to run the original Starcraft, released in 1998, on my Linux desktop using QEMU. Thus began my six hour rediscovery of computing in the 90s, an era when installing working software required wizardry, persistence, and luck. Windows 98 First, I installed Windows 98 in QEMU using an ISO that I found online. Pentium 2 processor, 128 MiB of RAM, and 1GiB disk should be more than enough to handle Windows 98!| devnonsense.com
Game-unit path-finding is something that most players never notice until it doesn’t work quite right, and then that minor issue becomes a rage-inducing, end-of-the-world problem. During the development of StarCraft there were times when path-finding just didn’t work at all. As the development of StarCraft dragged on it seemed like it would never be done: […]| Code Of Honor
At a certain point in every programmer’s career we each find a bug that seems impossible because the code is right, dammit! So it must be the operating system, the tools or the computer that’s causing the problem. Right?!? Today’s story is about some of those bugs I’ve discovered in my career. This bug is […]| Code Of Honor
In my previous article about StarCraft I talked about why we rebooted the project and changed it from a follow-on to Warcraft — derisively called “Orcs in space” in 1996 — into the award-winning game that we were finally able to deliver after two more years of hardship. But one noteworthy source of inspiration didn’t […]| Code Of Honor