Hi mapsters. I've been trying to work on custom campaigns ever since I learned how to use SC1 editor, but I never took the time to fully plan one. So recently I bought many SC books and decided to port some of them to the game. It buys me a lot of time as I don't need to imagine the whole lore, characters, and events needed for a good campaign. To check if it could work and also to see some fast results I decided to start with the Uprising book, as it has only 3 possible "missions" in it. But of course there are some difficulties and I hope feedback can help me with that.
I uploaded an alpha version of the first mission to Battle.net (NA and EU right now), search for: Uprising Into the Eye of The Storm. I'd like to have opinions, feedback, bug reports. Specially from people who read the book. Here is the list of things I need the most right now:
ARCADE
The screenshots are useless as we can't read them properly. I have been asking Blizzard to change the screenshot window so the screenshots are always full size, which isn't diffcult as they are 800x600, but they never replied. The problem is even worse on the beta.
BRIEFING (See the screenshot at the bottom of this post)
What do you think about the briefing screen? Is it good? Should I change it somehow?
Is the briefing too long? I took most of the dialogue concerning that mission, but there are parts I haven't added yet.
Are the screenshots any good? Would you like to read more about previous chapters of the book?
Does the briafing screen work properly for your resolution? It was planned in a 1360x768 resolution and I expect problems with smaller resolutions. Could you please attach a screenshot so we can know how it looks in your resolution?
MISSION
I know the mission is too short and too uninteresting right now. I'd like to have suggestions for it, but I can't stray too far from the book.
What voice and portrait should I use for Pollock Rimes? (Please only answer if you read the book)
Can I inlude the part of driving the tank into the storm? How should I do it?
And feel free to bring more discussions to the table.
@DEFILERRULEZ: Hi Defiler! You can try the version in SC1Remake's drop box. You use a pretty high screen resolution, don't you? I'm curious to see how the briefing looks like for you.
@EivindL: I just published it on EU. Yeah, the books provide all the lore, and conversations I need, but they don't translate well as missions for the player, so I need to make the mission longer and more insteresting somehow.
Tried it, briefing was good but completely quiet, i know some maps add random quotes from the character in question, don't know if that would be fitting here. Good length but a summery of the objectives in the end would be nice, you can't skip it in order to view the screenshots about the characters. You could also consider changing the colour of the screenshots to 'Terran Green'.
@SheogorathSC: Go I know the lack of voice sounds is disturbing. Im not sure how I could fix it and I don't like the idea of adding random quotes, specially because Mengsk doesn't have random quotes.
A skip button is a nice idea, I agree sometimes it's boring to wait the whole briefing to be able to check them. I used the battlenet guide design, that's why its all blue. Maybe green would look better, but since I don't have all the projects saved it would take long to remake them.
@SheogorathSC: Go Thanks, good to know it works for larger resolutions, it means I planned it right :-) I think I'll replace the Start Mission button with the Skip button, so both buttons below the briefing are related to it, and create a new button for Start Mission somewhere else.
Can you read the information in the Planet Data fields? Those screenshot are too small to read in 1360x768.
@EivindL: Go Keep in mind the mission itself is short, boring and based on how things happened in the book. I want to finish the briefing first, so I can use this same design for the other missions too. But of course I'm open to suggestions for the mission. First ting I want to do about it is to finish the units based on the book's characters, and they are Somo Hung (Marine, pretty much finished already), Pollock Rimes (Marine), Forrest Keel (Siege Tank) and Sela Brock (Wraith, but she's going to use Banshee's portrait and voice sounds).
@Monkalizer: Go I don't understand what you mean. I simply copy/pasted Arcturus' lines from the book. There is enough conversation for all the missions and more.
I just played it. The presentation is awesome. I like the look of the briefing room a lot and the pages with the information about characters and planet.I have read the book but it's been too long to answer any of your questions about the Siege Tank or the Portrait.
However, I have created some campaigns based on books myself, and I can tell you that YOU CAN STRAY far away from the books. People won't mind. I always used the books as a general guide for the storyline and sometimes the quests but I never let it take over the gameplay. When neccessary I create new enemies and objectives to make gameplay more interesting. Gameplay always comes first. The quality of your campaign isn't based on how close it is to the books but on how fun they are to play. Tailor the storyline around that gameplay if necessary.
As I mentioned I have forgotten about the details of the book, but with the information I've have taken from this thread and the mission you provided I would structure the gameplay as follows:
Make each Missile Turret a challenge. Place it in smaller sub-bases or camps with different types of enemy units and different terrain layouts. Make these bases complement your player's unit's skills. The player should feel challenged but also clever when using abilities. Don't be afraid to use scripted events to give the player or the enemy additional units, items, help. Add non-objective goals: Let the player use switches to open doors, maybe talk to a character, gather items and so on. Don't be afraid to give your heroes a levelling and skill system. And then the second mission can be totally different by being about base-building. Take a look at the baseless missions of SC1, WC3, SC2 and study what makes them interesting.
About terrain and presentation: Don't start with the terrain until your happy with the gameplay. No professional game company does that. If your gameplay sucks nice terrain won't cover it up; If you finished terrain and then start on gameplay you might have to do terrain all over on many places; If you try to fit your gameplay into the already finished terrain, your gameplay will definitely suck. Don't make the terrain bigger then neccessary, and don't have too much space between objectives unless it is filled with interesting things, or else it will feel empty. Luckily the SC2 editor is powerful enough to let you resize a map whenever you want. Add a cinematic sequence to the beginning of the map (nothing fancy, just show how the units get to the place) and as a reward a cinematic sequence at the end of the map. Study SC2 maps with the terrain you want to use to see how Blizzard uses doodads, textures and cliffs to make a map look nice.
@OutsiderXE: Go Thanks for the feedback, you have some interesting points there. What's your screen resolution?
Well, so everybody can follow the discussion here's a resume of how things happened in the book:
-Mengsk does all that talking from the Hyperion.
-A Dropship leaves the Tank (with all marines inside it) in a desert outside the storm.
-The Tank crosses the storm and attacks the nearby turrets without opposition.
-The Tank broke so it couldn't move to attack the last turret.
-The Confederate marines grouped around the last turret to prevent the dropships from landing.
-Sela Brock (Wraith hero) comes to help taking the turret down while the dropships land.
-The turret is destroyed but Sela's wraith is badly damaged and flies right into the storm.
-The Marines enter the facility and find Kerrigan, Scientists and Zerg larvae.
And this is how I'd like to make it:
-Most of Mengsk's monologue happens in the briefing, but some lines will be transmited latter when they are relevant.
-A Dropship leaves the Tank (with all marines inside it) in a desert outside the storm.
- The player has to drive the tank through a "storm" somehow avoiding moving obstacles or debris that would destroy the tank.
- Inside the storm the player can use the Tank and Marines to destroy the first turrets, but the tank will break before the last one.
- For each turret destroyed by the player a dropship lands with more marines so the player can attack the other ones.
- When the third turret is destroyed Sela Brock becomes avaiable to the player.
- When the last turrey is destroyed the Marines enter the facility and a cinematic with them inside ends the map.
You could make it so the tank would lose hp over time because the environment is too harsh. The player would have to get the tank to safe zones (eg caves, between cliffs) as quickly as possible. With collected resources from destroyed enemies or debris the tank could be repaired in those safe zones.
The question then would be what would happen to other types of units? What does happen to them in the book? Maybe the marines would also lose hp but could be loaded into the siege tank (and auto-healed over time in there), and would only get out to attack stuff. this would be an incentive (main objective?) to keep the tank alive until the end of the mission (also because the tank is the only one with siege capabilities, giving it the ability to attack enemy bunkers(?) from long range.
How could I make the part of the tank going through the storm? I'm not good with terrain and I can't miagine right noe how I'd make it work.
Just place some wind emitters and add a behavior that reduces speed or something.
Oh and whatever you do, don't add "random voices". Either have it fully voice acted, or not at all. Nothing wrong with the latter option. It's been a while since I read Uprising, but this looks pretty on the mark.
Pollock Rimes is nondescript - the portrait you have now is ok. The SC wiki has this as his description:
"Rimes was bald and scarred, with a mostly missing left ear, a previous-broken nose, crooked teeth and an indentation on the left side of his skull. He rarely smiled."
Unless you plan on making a custom portrait, any random soldier/musclehead should suffice really.
@OutsiderXE: Go In the book all the marines were inside the tank when it crossed the storm, and it did non-stop. So my idea was to make it a straight course where the player would need to steer away from immobile and mobile obstacles. If he fails the tank dies and he must start again, if he succeeds then he moves to the next part of the mission. I don't want to make this part too complex. It's go from A to B without hitting any obstacles, I just don't know how to make it interesting. Maybe the tank moves forward by itself and the player only needs to move to the sides? Something like the Lost Viking game in the campaign?
@Gradius12: Go I agree with you, no random quotes. Aren't emitters a possibler source of lag if I place a lot of them in the map? I'll try something like that, but first I need to plan how this part will be played.
I'm trying to go with a custom portrait for Pollock Rimes (and I need to change his voice). But I don't know which one to use as a base. I thought about using Tychus, as he matches the description fairly well, but he's "too famous" to be used as another character. So I think I'll pick one civilian or one of those random Marines and modify from there.
Hi mapsters. I've been trying to work on custom campaigns ever since I learned how to use SC1 editor, but I never took the time to fully plan one. So recently I bought many SC books and decided to port some of them to the game. It buys me a lot of time as I don't need to imagine the whole lore, characters, and events needed for a good campaign. To check if it could work and also to see some fast results I decided to start with the Uprising book, as it has only 3 possible "missions" in it. But of course there are some difficulties and I hope feedback can help me with that.
I uploaded an alpha version of the first mission to Battle.net (NA and EU right now), search for: Uprising Into the Eye of The Storm. I'd like to have opinions, feedback, bug reports. Specially from people who read the book. Here is the list of things I need the most right now:
ARCADE
The screenshots are useless as we can't read them properly. I have been asking Blizzard to change the screenshot window so the screenshots are always full size, which isn't diffcult as they are 800x600, but they never replied. The problem is even worse on the beta.
BRIEFING (See the screenshot at the bottom of this post)
What do you think about the briefing screen? Is it good? Should I change it somehow?
Is the briefing too long? I took most of the dialogue concerning that mission, but there are parts I haven't added yet.
Are the screenshots any good? Would you like to read more about previous chapters of the book?
Does the briafing screen work properly for your resolution? It was planned in a 1360x768 resolution and I expect problems with smaller resolutions. Could you please attach a screenshot so we can know how it looks in your resolution?
MISSION
I know the mission is too short and too uninteresting right now. I'd like to have suggestions for it, but I can't stray too far from the book.
What voice and portrait should I use for Pollock Rimes? (Please only answer if you read the book)
Can I inlude the part of driving the tank into the storm? How should I do it?
And feel free to bring more discussions to the table.
I am having not much time to reading the book,so for now i am behind,but it still looks interesting this story :)
I read the book a while ago. I don't remember the details, but I'm sure it'll make a good campaign. I'm in Europe, so I can't play it, though.
The briefing screen looks awesome!
@DEFILERRULEZ: Hi Defiler! You can try the version in SC1Remake's drop box. You use a pretty high screen resolution, don't you? I'm curious to see how the briefing looks like for you.
@EivindL: I just published it on EU. Yeah, the books provide all the lore, and conversations I need, but they don't translate well as missions for the player, so I need to make the mission longer and more insteresting somehow.
Tried it, briefing was good but completely quiet, i know some maps add random quotes from the character in question, don't know if that would be fitting here. Good length but a summery of the objectives in the end would be nice, you can't skip it in order to view the screenshots about the characters. You could also consider changing the colour of the screenshots to 'Terran Green'.
@SheogorathSC: Go I know the lack of voice sounds is disturbing. Im not sure how I could fix it and I don't like the idea of adding random quotes, specially because Mengsk doesn't have random quotes.
A skip button is a nice idea, I agree sometimes it's boring to wait the whole briefing to be able to check them. I used the battlenet guide design, that's why its all blue. Maybe green would look better, but since I don't have all the projects saved it would take long to remake them.
No briefing screenshot? :-(
@SoulFilcher: Go
I took one but i assumed you were just interested in lower resolution ones.
Edit: A suggestion for the skip button would be that it replaces the 'Replay' one while the briefing is playing.
@SheogorathSC: Go Thanks, good to know it works for larger resolutions, it means I planned it right :-) I think I'll replace the Start Mission button with the Skip button, so both buttons below the briefing are related to it, and create a new button for Start Mission somewhere else.
Can you read the information in the Planet Data fields? Those screenshot are too small to read in 1360x768.
I'm going to get around to trying this. Time is a privilege not bestowed upon me at the moment, I'm afraid. Forgetfulness, on the other hand.
Perhaps you could make it appear as letter being written - like project blackstone?
@EivindL: Go Keep in mind the mission itself is short, boring and based on how things happened in the book. I want to finish the briefing first, so I can use this same design for the other missions too. But of course I'm open to suggestions for the mission. First ting I want to do about it is to finish the units based on the book's characters, and they are Somo Hung (Marine, pretty much finished already), Pollock Rimes (Marine), Forrest Keel (Siege Tank) and Sela Brock (Wraith, but she's going to use Banshee's portrait and voice sounds).
@Monkalizer: Go I don't understand what you mean. I simply copy/pasted Arcturus' lines from the book. There is enough conversation for all the missions and more.
That's the spirit! :D
I just played it. The presentation is awesome. I like the look of the briefing room a lot and the pages with the information about characters and planet.I have read the book but it's been too long to answer any of your questions about the Siege Tank or the Portrait.
However, I have created some campaigns based on books myself, and I can tell you that YOU CAN STRAY far away from the books. People won't mind. I always used the books as a general guide for the storyline and sometimes the quests but I never let it take over the gameplay. When neccessary I create new enemies and objectives to make gameplay more interesting. Gameplay always comes first. The quality of your campaign isn't based on how close it is to the books but on how fun they are to play. Tailor the storyline around that gameplay if necessary.
As I mentioned I have forgotten about the details of the book, but with the information I've have taken from this thread and the mission you provided I would structure the gameplay as follows:
Make each Missile Turret a challenge. Place it in smaller sub-bases or camps with different types of enemy units and different terrain layouts. Make these bases complement your player's unit's skills. The player should feel challenged but also clever when using abilities. Don't be afraid to use scripted events to give the player or the enemy additional units, items, help. Add non-objective goals: Let the player use switches to open doors, maybe talk to a character, gather items and so on. Don't be afraid to give your heroes a levelling and skill system. And then the second mission can be totally different by being about base-building. Take a look at the baseless missions of SC1, WC3, SC2 and study what makes them interesting.
About terrain and presentation: Don't start with the terrain until your happy with the gameplay. No professional game company does that. If your gameplay sucks nice terrain won't cover it up; If you finished terrain and then start on gameplay you might have to do terrain all over on many places; If you try to fit your gameplay into the already finished terrain, your gameplay will definitely suck. Don't make the terrain bigger then neccessary, and don't have too much space between objectives unless it is filled with interesting things, or else it will feel empty. Luckily the SC2 editor is powerful enough to let you resize a map whenever you want. Add a cinematic sequence to the beginning of the map (nothing fancy, just show how the units get to the place) and as a reward a cinematic sequence at the end of the map. Study SC2 maps with the terrain you want to use to see how Blizzard uses doodads, textures and cliffs to make a map look nice.
Here's a link to screenshots of my map Shadow of the Xel'Naga Chapter 1 (also based on a book) - http://outsiderxeportfolio.blogspot.de/2011/01/shadow-of-xelnaga-chapter-1-ingame.html . It might give you a few ideas with the terrain.
I can't find it on Battle.net.
@OutsiderXE: Go Thanks for the feedback, you have some interesting points there. What's your screen resolution?
Well, so everybody can follow the discussion here's a resume of how things happened in the book:
-Mengsk does all that talking from the Hyperion.
-A Dropship leaves the Tank (with all marines inside it) in a desert outside the storm.
-The Tank crosses the storm and attacks the nearby turrets without opposition.
-The Tank broke so it couldn't move to attack the last turret.
-The Confederate marines grouped around the last turret to prevent the dropships from landing.
-Sela Brock (Wraith hero) comes to help taking the turret down while the dropships land.
-The turret is destroyed but Sela's wraith is badly damaged and flies right into the storm.
-The Marines enter the facility and find Kerrigan, Scientists and Zerg larvae.
And this is how I'd like to make it:
-Most of Mengsk's monologue happens in the briefing, but some lines will be transmited latter when they are relevant.
-A Dropship leaves the Tank (with all marines inside it) in a desert outside the storm.
- The player has to drive the tank through a "storm" somehow avoiding moving obstacles or debris that would destroy the tank.
- Inside the storm the player can use the Tank and Marines to destroy the first turrets, but the tank will break before the last one.
- For each turret destroyed by the player a dropship lands with more marines so the player can attack the other ones.
- When the third turret is destroyed Sela Brock becomes avaiable to the player.
- When the last turrey is destroyed the Marines enter the facility and a cinematic with them inside ends the map.
@EivindL: Go Search for Uprising, it's there.
Sounds good. my screen resolution is 1650x1080. Some of the buttons were off in the briefing room.
@OutsiderXE: Go Could you read the information in the Planet Data fields?
How could I make the part of the tank going through the storm? I'm not good with terrain and I can't miagine right noe how I'd make it work.
Yes, I did.
You could make it so the tank would lose hp over time because the environment is too harsh. The player would have to get the tank to safe zones (eg caves, between cliffs) as quickly as possible. With collected resources from destroyed enemies or debris the tank could be repaired in those safe zones.
The question then would be what would happen to other types of units? What does happen to them in the book? Maybe the marines would also lose hp but could be loaded into the siege tank (and auto-healed over time in there), and would only get out to attack stuff. this would be an incentive (main objective?) to keep the tank alive until the end of the mission (also because the tank is the only one with siege capabilities, giving it the ability to attack enemy bunkers(?) from long range.
Just place some wind emitters and add a behavior that reduces speed or something.
Oh and whatever you do, don't add "random voices". Either have it fully voice acted, or not at all. Nothing wrong with the latter option. It's been a while since I read Uprising, but this looks pretty on the mark.
Pollock Rimes is nondescript - the portrait you have now is ok. The SC wiki has this as his description:
"Rimes was bald and scarred, with a mostly missing left ear, a previous-broken nose, crooked teeth and an indentation on the left side of his skull. He rarely smiled."
Unless you plan on making a custom portrait, any random soldier/musclehead should suffice really.
@OutsiderXE: Go In the book all the marines were inside the tank when it crossed the storm, and it did non-stop. So my idea was to make it a straight course where the player would need to steer away from immobile and mobile obstacles. If he fails the tank dies and he must start again, if he succeeds then he moves to the next part of the mission. I don't want to make this part too complex. It's go from A to B without hitting any obstacles, I just don't know how to make it interesting. Maybe the tank moves forward by itself and the player only needs to move to the sides? Something like the Lost Viking game in the campaign?
@Gradius12: Go I agree with you, no random quotes. Aren't emitters a possibler source of lag if I place a lot of them in the map? I'll try something like that, but first I need to plan how this part will be played.
I'm trying to go with a custom portrait for Pollock Rimes (and I need to change his voice). But I don't know which one to use as a base. I thought about using Tychus, as he matches the description fairly well, but he's "too famous" to be used as another character. So I think I'll pick one civilian or one of those random Marines and modify from there.