Races of Star Craft - Design

Design

Across the course of the game's development, the races and graphics of StarCraft have changed drastically from Chris Metzen's original concept art. In particular, since their initial public debut at E3 1996, the Zerg have seen extensive changes to their visual design. This was primarily due to Blizzard's attempt to steer the game away from the visual appearance, unveiled at the 1996 E3, that had earned the game a derisive label of "Warcraft in space". The Zerg were originally known as the "nightmarish invaders", later becoming the "Zurg", and then renamed again to its current spelling to avoid any potential copyright conflicts with Pixar's Toy Story character of Emperor Zurg. In the early alpha versions built by Bob Fitch, the Zerg still showed their insect-inspired base, but their appearance was heavily dominated by spikes and bright shades of blue and purple. Early Protoss concept art showed a green and blue color scheme in their mechanical armor. Closely hewing to the familiar visual style of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the build received much criticism from industry press, prompting a redesign of the game engine and an overhaul of the races' respective visual designs.

This new version, unveiled in early 1997, still used the Warcraft II engine as its base, but with distinct changes. The Terrans and the Protoss were detailed to a much greater extent than at E3 1996, revealing many of the game's units in forms similar to those of the final product. Blizzard Entertainment also began the careful task of balancing the game's three races. However, in February 1997, Bob Fitch declared that, despite these efforts, the game engine was simply incapable of delivering features requested by the developers: cloaking, burrowing and many other special effects. The development team therefore embarked upon a two-month overhaul of the graphics engine. This new beta version was far closer to the release version, as the races took on their now-recognisable graphical styles: the brown insectoid design of the Zerg, the sleek yellow armour of the Protoss, and the grey machinery of the Terrans. Most of the unit designs were estabilised at this point, their graphics only undergoing minor changes. Several game features were also added at this stage in the development that never made it into the final release, such as ships banking as they turned, transport ships landing on the ground to pick up and drop off passengers, and efficiency ranks, although Terran units would retain ranks as a purely aesthestic feature. The Terran Valkyrie-class missile frigate also appeared in this build of the game, although it was removed before the final release, only to be reintroduced later in the Brood War expansion.