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[IMG News]

Blizzard Entertainment has announced that its highly anticipated real-time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, will arrive in stores throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Mexico, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau starting on July 27, 2010.

"We've been looking forward to revisiting the StarCraft universe for many years, and we're excited that the time for that is almost here," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "Thanks to our beta testers, we're making great progress on the final stages of development, and we'll be ready to welcome players all over the world to StarCraft II and the new Battle.net® in just a few months."

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is the sequel to Blizzard Entertainment's 1998 hit StarCraft, which has been hailed by players and critics worldwide as one of the top real-time strategy games of all time. Sporting a vibrant 3D-graphics engine, StarCraft II will once again center on the clash between the protoss, terrans, and zerg, with each side deploying legions of veteran, upgraded, and new unit types. Unparalleled online play for StarCraft II will be available through a new version of Battle.net, Blizzard Entertainment's world-renowned gaming service. Battle.net has been redesigned from the ground up to be the premier online gaming destination for Blizzard gamers, with several enhancements and new features, such as voice communication, cloud file storage, leagues and ladders, achievements, stat-tracking, and more.

The solo campaign for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty will continue the epic saga where it left off in StarCraft: Brood War®. The story line chronicles the exploits of marshal-turned-rebel-leader Jim Raynor and features both familiar faces and new heroes. Players will be able to tailor the experience, choosing their own mission path and selecting technology and research upgrades to suit their playing style throughout the 29-mission campaign. Several challenge-mode mini-games will also be included, with focused goals designed to ease players into the basics of multiplayer strategies.

For more information on StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, visit the official website at the link below. Further details about the game will be announced in the coming weeks.

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[nick68k]

OS X performance reportedly isn't very good compared to the Windows version.

Let's hope that Blizz (or Apple/ATI/nVidia with regards to graphics drivers) can optimise it a bit prior to release.

[star-affinity]

nick68k, on 04 May 2010 - 07:26 AM, said:

OS X performance reportedly isn't very good compared to the Windows version.

Let's hope that Blizz (or Apple/ATI/nVidia with regards to graphics drivers) can optimise it a bit prior to release.

That's sad news, because the Windows version is already demanding as it is.
I've tried the Starcraft 2 beta for Windows on a computer that has a 2.6 GHz Core i7 processor with 6 GB RAM and Radeon HD 4890 with 1 GB VRAM running Windows 7 Ultimate and the latest graphics drivers from AMD. It's quite laggy to scroll when on the ”Ultra” graphics setting. This is on a 1900 x 1200 monitor. If I run it using the ”High” graphics setting things becomes better.

Will be interesting to try the the Mac version on this same hardware.
I hope it isn't as bad as the difference in performance for the Bioshock demo that I tested in both Mac OS X and Windows. Things are much smoother in the Windows version of this game.

For the record, Call of Duty 4 runs just as well in Mac OS X as in Windows – at least for me on the above hardware.

[bookman]

Hopefully they have some optimizations up their sleeve. It is beta software after all.

[Cougar]

It is true. I get about 20-25 FPS in OS X, 35-40 Windows. Medium settings, 2008 iMac w/ Radeon HD 2600. According to Blizzard it is due to Apple's poor graphics drivers. Apparently SC2 uses some fancy schmancy shaders which aren't optimized in OS X.

[Rokrad15]

Hmmm interesting everyone seems to have problems....

I have a new iMac i7 Radeon HD 4850 running at 2560x1440 and I'm getting great frame-rates at full settings haven't slowed down even with the biggest battles. I bet the new Macbook Pros handle it very well also.

[badger2d]

Well this gives me a deadline to save up the cash for a new computer.

[Mister Mumbles]

I really hope they get to fixing that issue before its release (or soonish after), otherwise I don't expect my Macbook will have a snowball's chance in hell, and I'm really not in the market for a new comp right now.

[NAG]

I can also confirm that it runs extremely poorly on OS X on my 2008 iMac. Whatever I put the settings to it stutters (and it isn't maxing out the RAM or CPU on low which seems kind of weird...I'm not entirely buying the drivers excuse as the only problem). The Windows version supposedly had some performance issues early on so maybe it's just that. Or maybe it's yet another sign that their mac development is heading down hill (WoW patches for mac are getting progressively worse as time goes on such as the game just out right refusing to play more than 2 minutes without a crash patch...at least in my opinion).

[star-affinity]

After hearing all the complaints on the Mac version I was pleasantly surprised, at least when it comes to FPS.

For me the frame rates seems just as good as in Windows (or even better!?) when running the ”Ultra” graphic setting.
Maybe ”Ultra” on the Mac and ”Ultra” on Windows isn't directly comparable (I got the feeling things were a bit more shiny and reflective in Windows?) but when scrolling around and over a base with all the harvesters working things are smoother for me in Mac OS X. Weird?

The big issue on the Mac side of things are the frequent ”fraction of a second” pauses that the game does. This doesn't seem to be related to performance in regards of lack of hardware power because in between things run pretty smooth.
I don't remember the frequent pauses being in the Windows version.

Edit:
OK, the frequent pauses are in the Windows version too!
And it's not only me:

http://sc2pod.com/tr...s/blue/?id=6388
http://forums.battle...d=5000&pageNo=1

This happens both on on my ”Hack” and a MacBook Pro. it's got nothing to do with graphics settings - happens anyway.

[nick68k]

star-affinity, on 06 May 2010 - 02:28 AM, said:

After hearing all the complaints on the Mac version I was pleasantly surprised, at least when it comes to FPS.

What hardware are you using?

I have a 2008-vintage 2.4 GHz C2D/HD 2600 iMac that I suspect will lack the grunt to run the game acceptably at anything other than the lowest graphics settings. I hope I'm wrong tho

[star-affinity]

nick68k, on 06 May 2010 - 01:40 PM, said:

What hardware are you using?

I have a 2008-vintage 2.4 GHz C2D/HD 2600 iMac that I suspect will lack the grunt to run the game acceptably at anything other than the lowest graphics settings. I hope I'm wrong tho

I'm afraid it's a Hackintosh..      

Anyway, I don't think you have to run at the lowest setting, but maybe not more than medium. That being said the graphics can be adjusted in many ways, and while it's not as pretty on lowest all the cool gameplay is still there.

[star-affinity]

It seems the latest patch (patch 11 I think) got rid of the frequent pauses I was having!

[pantherv]

running on my i7 it ran great with all settings at ultra high at first. Since the latest patch though i had to turn everything down to high as i was geeting artifacts and blurred lines on screen.