Having finally finished my job as a newspaper editor at my school, I might have some free time to do map creation again. I can't promise too much, but it was a lot of fun last time, so I figured I could at least start a thread and show you some of the ideas I have. It's all very rough at the moment, but I do have some story threads (including an ending, which always helps), some characters, and a general idea of what I want this thing to be.
So, what the hell is this? Nemesis is a 10-mission RPG campaign where you control a different hero for each mission (from all three races). No hero is played twice, creating a zig-zag-like narrative that jumps from character to character. The campaign will be heavy on story, with a lot of it happening in the background, either filtered through other characters (creating the possibility of distortion) or through the news. The story will be heavy with politics, starting with the death of a sector president, and then moving the election that follows.
Now, I feel pretty confident about terrain and story, but I'm not strong with the data editor. Considering this endeavor will make use of quite a few heroes, I might be needing some help with that. If anyone else has something they want to help with (art and models is another thing I suck at), feel free to let me know.
Obviously, since this is just in the planning stages, I can't tell when I'll start the work. But I'll keep you updated as I create more stuff, and I'm happy to receive ideas! Cheers!
I'm glad to see that you are thinking about planning in an iterative way. Specifically, keeping the art and modelling separate. Many map foundations could be created and be entirely playable, with visual enhancements that do not necessarily change the gameplay added on after.
I've seen a lot of furious hard work done on assets in the past for very ambitious projects that are then abandoned when the scope of actual terraining/triggering (the real meat of a map, if you will) begins to take shape. Working on the real meat first, and adding art, voice acting, more complex data editing, etc. later seems fundamental to continued progress and motivation. I'm not a map maker, but I'm quite familiar with development methodologies and have occasionally spouted this gripe in some of videos here and there.
PS is a good example where you didn't really use any custom models - you had the Nova model from the editor and gave her some fancy abilities. At any point, you could change the look of the model and, while it may add to the overall visual experience, it doesn't require fundamental changes to the map. This is why I always think about terrain and triggers first, then data, then visual assets - don't be afraid to use default models to just get started. I don't plan specific, timestamped edits before having the video footage.
Separately, is this meant to be in a different in-game universe than Perfect Soldiers?
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Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Yeah, aesthetics can quickly become superficial, though if some of the heroes had some custom variations (ala Janus at the end of Amber Sun), it can work for immersion. But I agree that terrain and triggers are more important, and should always be the foundation.
Yes, different in-game universe. I have some leftover ideas for the three-race campaign I never got started on. Lot of that stuff would fit perfectly for PS, but I'd hate for people to play 30 missions for new stuff. Besides, it's cool to do something fresh, which is why I'm thinking RPG for this.
Hi. I've only created a single campaign for SC2, with only 7 maps, but I tried really hard to make each map as different from one another as possible. This allowed me to learn many aspects of the editor. I'm not a perfect data editor, but I feel confident.
Your idea to have different heroes could be the excellent starting point for you to dive deeper into unfamiliar SC2-editor-territory. You should also consider a gameplay-first approach. It might be more time-consuming, but in my opinion the result is better when you focus on gameplay first, and then work on terrain and additional art.
Quote from Frank Pearce (Vice President of Blizzard): "Nobody remembers how long it took. Only that it was awesome."
Here are some of the characters I have created so far!
Name: Fitzpatrick Felderman
Allegiance: None (retired)
A politician and professor emeritus in biology, Fitzpatrick Felderman was the initiator of the Great Liberation, a massive program that repealed all laws in existence, ending the concept of governments as we know it. Spending five years as sector president to oversee the completion of the program, he returned to his academic pursuits for a decade, before finally retiring. With his legacy now being questioned, Felderman returns to the public eye to defend the merits of his Liberation.
Name: Belior
Allegiance: The Tradewealth, Black Night (former)
A former intelligence operative, Belior is now a politician in the city of Calimo, on the planet Aruna. During the long war with the Vidalians, Belior was captured by the enemy and gruesomely tortured. The ordeal deprived him of his left arm, which has now been replaced by a mechanical claw. As a politician, he calls for a repeal of the Great Liberation.
Name: Cyrilos
Allegiance: The Tradewealth
The current Speaker of the Tradewealth, Cyrilos is an ambitious politician, whom many suspects to be a lock-in as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Though formerly of Vidal, he now embraces peace, wishing for the enmity between Aruna and Vidal to end.
Name: Garrison Grey
Allegiance: Locust Union
Garrison Grey is the current leader of the Locust Union, a position he inherited after the company’s former leader, Benjamin Maroon, passed away. The Union itself is renowned for their brutal tactics, something Grey wants to abolish, styling himself as “the Great Reformer.” While some applaud his stance, others dismiss him as a softie and betrayer of Maroon’s legacy.
Name: Reynia “The Blood Bride” Mallevion
Allegiance: Locust Union
Renowned as a fierce warrior and experienced commander, major Reynia Mallevion is one of the most feared soldiers in the sector. Her cunning, it’s said, is only matched by her brutality. Though she prefers to fight in the field, she remains ambitious, climbing the ladder of the Locust Union one bloodied corpse at the time.
Name: Xhanador
Allegiance: Locust Union
A protoss from the planet Vidal, Xhanador has become a long way from his humble beginnings. A survivor of the nuclear holocaust that nearly extinguished Vidal, he came to Aruna as an immigrant to work for the Locust Union, where he climbed the ladder to become the company’s sky admiral.
Name: Elena Raine
Allegiance: Locust Union
Originally born on Aruna, Elena Raine currently resides on the planet Taurus, where she is employed by the Locust Union as a soldier. Elena is no strong believer in her company, having only taken the job as a financial necessity.
Name: Kharima
Allegiance: Dragon Brood
Feared across the entire sector, Kharima is the current leader of the Dragon Brood, from which she controls practically all zerg in the sector. Unlike previous brood mothers, Kharima uses not only her numbers, but her cunning as well. She has a fondness for traps, seemingly never engaging in battle without an ace up her sleeve.
Name: The Matriarch
Allegiance: Dragon Brood
Little is known about the Matriarch, except that she is one of Kharima’s most trusted lieutenants.
Name: Christina Briggs
Allegiance: Calimo
An ambitious journalist.
Name: Marilyn Ashbone
Allegiance: Black Night
An operative for Black Night, Marilyn Ashbone is a soldier with extraordinary abilities, which are largely the product of the laboratory she grew up in. Her training finally completed, she now gets her first mission.
The presidential election is just around the corner, and speculation over possible candidates has long begun. Once, the race was a mere formality, existing only to determine who received the honor of having what many consider to be the easiest job in the sector. This year, however, things are different.
According to the Tome of Fitzpatrick Felderman, the duties of the president are simple: “Ensure the legacy of the Great Liberation, and provide stability by formally denying anyone the ability to reinstate legislature.” In other words: make sure no laws are passed. But twenty years is a long time, and some people have grown tired of the Great Liberation. Longing for the old days, they rally behind candidates willing to speak up for conservative ideals, like military protection, social justice, and a system of public courts.
Others are less inclined. Many have benefited from the Great Liberation; none more so than the Locust Union, a consortium of corporations that have long surpassed their competition in size. Just as much an army as a company, the Locust Union was once the main opponent for the Liberation’s repeal; with Benjamin Maroon at the helm, none even dared suggest anything but preserving Fitzpatrick Felderman’s legacy. But Maroon is long gone, replaced by the reformer Garrison Grey, who seeks to wash out the bloody reputation the Union has created for themselves. Change, some say, is coming.
The presidential election is coming up! Here are the candidates:
Garrison Grey
"One should never discount a candidate from the Locust Union as a possible winner of the president's seat. Garrison Grey's predecessor, Benjamin Maroon, briefly sat the seat himself, and although the two couldn't be less alike, only a fool would bet against this candidate. Grey is staunch supporter of the Great Liberation, and the Locust Union is the largest member of the Tradewealth."
– Jeremy Croquette, professor of political science at the University of Calimo
Cyrilos
"It has been three decades since the war of Aruna and Vidal, which ended when the latter world was incinerated from above by the former. Since then, only people from Aruna has sat in the president's seat, making Cyrilos a watershed candidate. Though many of his Vidalian peers thirst for vengeance, Cyrilos calls for peace between the two worlds. His credentials are strong, as he has worked as the Vidalian representative in the Tradewealth for the last fifteen years."
– Jeremy Croquette
Belior
"Belior is the dark horse candidate, being the only one of the three candidates who call for a repeal for the Great Liberation. A former Black Night operative and decorated soldier, Belior is the worker's candidate. If elected president, he promises to reinstate the sector's government, recreating several public programs and agencies, the latter including schools, hospitals, as well as a military, courts system and welfare net."
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
It's Garrison Grey and Cyrilos who are the non-government candidates. Belior wants to reinstate the government.
So I have an outline for the story now, with a rough idea of what each mission be about, and what heroes will be playable. A lot of details are missing, but having a finished outline does speed things up. I won't be able to start making missions until late August, though.
There will be 3 heroes from each race, plus a mission with all heroes from all three races. The election will be going on in the background, then slowly become a larger part of the main story.
Well, not dictator, precisely. The president's job is mostly symbolic, though those who run on a non-government platform has to ensure no laws are passed. Belior is a break from that, as he essentially proposes a more leftist system.
Apparently having a baseline, functioning government is leftist in your sci-fi wild west! This also sounds like a spiritual prequel to the Perfect Soldiers universe where there is no government and giant, nebulous corporations mandate how people live with no oversight to their moral hazard.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
I'm not too fond of in-universe stories, to be honest, with a few exceptions. It feels like fan fiction to me, and I like the freedom of not being constrained by an already existing story.
Apparently having a baseline, functioning government is leftist in your sci-fi wild west! This also sounds like a spiritual prequel to the Perfect Soldiers universe where there is no government and giant, nebulous corporations mandate how people live with no oversight to their moral hazard.
Haha! Well, when there's no government, most alternative political platforms will seem left-wing, I suppose.
The connection to PS is not unintentional. After I completed the campaign, I started writing down the story in novel form. However, the novel story is much more vast, with more characters, details and a deeper background. A lot of the stuff you'll see in this campaign will be stuff from that story that is not found in PS, hence the similarities.
I did play with the idea of integrating this into the PS campaign, first by adding "in-between" missions that would make the story wider, so to speak. However, I felt that would require too much of the player, as I would essentially ask him to play a remix of the old story with both old and new parts. Making Nemesis a sequel was another idea, but I didn't want to ask the player to play 30 missions to play this. Besides, this is more RPG-based, anyway.
Small update: I'll have the editor available soon enough. However, I'm not quite ready to start yet. I have the outline for the story, but not for any mission, and I need to refamiliarize myself with the editor as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Perfect Soldiers Campaign. I originally just watched it on Jayborino's channel, but that inspired me to get it and play myself. It was fantastic and formed my own inspiration to build my campaign project (which has been going for a long time but is still going). I look forward to seeing more, EivindL.
Hi, guys!
Having finally finished my job as a newspaper editor at my school, I might have some free time to do map creation again. I can't promise too much, but it was a lot of fun last time, so I figured I could at least start a thread and show you some of the ideas I have. It's all very rough at the moment, but I do have some story threads (including an ending, which always helps), some characters, and a general idea of what I want this thing to be.
So, what the hell is this? Nemesis is a 10-mission RPG campaign where you control a different hero for each mission (from all three races). No hero is played twice, creating a zig-zag-like narrative that jumps from character to character. The campaign will be heavy on story, with a lot of it happening in the background, either filtered through other characters (creating the possibility of distortion) or through the news. The story will be heavy with politics, starting with the death of a sector president, and then moving the election that follows.
Now, I feel pretty confident about terrain and story, but I'm not strong with the data editor. Considering this endeavor will make use of quite a few heroes, I might be needing some help with that. If anyone else has something they want to help with (art and models is another thing I suck at), feel free to let me know.
Obviously, since this is just in the planning stages, I can't tell when I'll start the work. But I'll keep you updated as I create more stuff, and I'm happy to receive ideas! Cheers!
I'm glad to see that you are thinking about planning in an iterative way. Specifically, keeping the art and modelling separate. Many map foundations could be created and be entirely playable, with visual enhancements that do not necessarily change the gameplay added on after.
I've seen a lot of furious hard work done on assets in the past for very ambitious projects that are then abandoned when the scope of actual terraining/triggering (the real meat of a map, if you will) begins to take shape. Working on the real meat first, and adding art, voice acting, more complex data editing, etc. later seems fundamental to continued progress and motivation. I'm not a map maker, but I'm quite familiar with development methodologies and have occasionally spouted this gripe in some of videos here and there.
PS is a good example where you didn't really use any custom models - you had the Nova model from the editor and gave her some fancy abilities. At any point, you could change the look of the model and, while it may add to the overall visual experience, it doesn't require fundamental changes to the map. This is why I always think about terrain and triggers first, then data, then visual assets - don't be afraid to use default models to just get started. I don't plan specific, timestamped edits before having the video footage.
Separately, is this meant to be in a different in-game universe than Perfect Soldiers?
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Yeah, aesthetics can quickly become superficial, though if some of the heroes had some custom variations (ala Janus at the end of Amber Sun), it can work for immersion. But I agree that terrain and triggers are more important, and should always be the foundation.
Yes, different in-game universe. I have some leftover ideas for the three-race campaign I never got started on. Lot of that stuff would fit perfectly for PS, but I'd hate for people to play 30 missions for new stuff. Besides, it's cool to do something fresh, which is why I'm thinking RPG for this.
Hi. I've only created a single campaign for SC2, with only 7 maps, but I tried really hard to make each map as different from one another as possible. This allowed me to learn many aspects of the editor. I'm not a perfect data editor, but I feel confident.
Your idea to have different heroes could be the excellent starting point for you to dive deeper into unfamiliar SC2-editor-territory. You should also consider a gameplay-first approach. It might be more time-consuming, but in my opinion the result is better when you focus on gameplay first, and then work on terrain and additional art.
Quote from Frank Pearce (Vice President of Blizzard): "Nobody remembers how long it took. Only that it was awesome."
Here are some of the characters I have created so far!
Name: Fitzpatrick Felderman
Allegiance: None (retired)
A politician and professor emeritus in biology, Fitzpatrick Felderman was the initiator of the Great Liberation, a massive program that repealed all laws in existence, ending the concept of governments as we know it. Spending five years as sector president to oversee the completion of the program, he returned to his academic pursuits for a decade, before finally retiring. With his legacy now being questioned, Felderman returns to the public eye to defend the merits of his Liberation.
Name: Belior
Allegiance: The Tradewealth, Black Night (former)
A former intelligence operative, Belior is now a politician in the city of Calimo, on the planet Aruna. During the long war with the Vidalians, Belior was captured by the enemy and gruesomely tortured. The ordeal deprived him of his left arm, which has now been replaced by a mechanical claw. As a politician, he calls for a repeal of the Great Liberation.
Name: Cyrilos
Allegiance: The Tradewealth
The current Speaker of the Tradewealth, Cyrilos is an ambitious politician, whom many suspects to be a lock-in as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election. Though formerly of Vidal, he now embraces peace, wishing for the enmity between Aruna and Vidal to end.
Name: Garrison Grey
Allegiance: Locust Union
Garrison Grey is the current leader of the Locust Union, a position he inherited after the company’s former leader, Benjamin Maroon, passed away. The Union itself is renowned for their brutal tactics, something Grey wants to abolish, styling himself as “the Great Reformer.” While some applaud his stance, others dismiss him as a softie and betrayer of Maroon’s legacy.
Name: Reynia “The Blood Bride” Mallevion
Allegiance: Locust Union
Renowned as a fierce warrior and experienced commander, major Reynia Mallevion is one of the most feared soldiers in the sector. Her cunning, it’s said, is only matched by her brutality. Though she prefers to fight in the field, she remains ambitious, climbing the ladder of the Locust Union one bloodied corpse at the time.
Name: Xhanador
Allegiance: Locust Union
A protoss from the planet Vidal, Xhanador has become a long way from his humble beginnings. A survivor of the nuclear holocaust that nearly extinguished Vidal, he came to Aruna as an immigrant to work for the Locust Union, where he climbed the ladder to become the company’s sky admiral.
Name: Elena Raine
Allegiance: Locust Union
Originally born on Aruna, Elena Raine currently resides on the planet Taurus, where she is employed by the Locust Union as a soldier. Elena is no strong believer in her company, having only taken the job as a financial necessity.
Name: Kharima
Allegiance: Dragon Brood
Feared across the entire sector, Kharima is the current leader of the Dragon Brood, from which she controls practically all zerg in the sector. Unlike previous brood mothers, Kharima uses not only her numbers, but her cunning as well. She has a fondness for traps, seemingly never engaging in battle without an ace up her sleeve.
Name: The Matriarch
Allegiance: Dragon Brood
Little is known about the Matriarch, except that she is one of Kharima’s most trusted lieutenants.
Name: Christina Briggs
Allegiance: Calimo
An ambitious journalist.
Name: Marilyn Ashbone
Allegiance: Black Night
An operative for Black Night, Marilyn Ashbone is a soldier with extraordinary abilities, which are largely the product of the laboratory she grew up in. Her training finally completed, she now gets her first mission.
And here is a tease of the story:
The presidential election is just around the corner, and speculation over possible candidates has long begun. Once, the race was a mere formality, existing only to determine who received the honor of having what many consider to be the easiest job in the sector. This year, however, things are different.
According to the Tome of Fitzpatrick Felderman, the duties of the president are simple: “Ensure the legacy of the Great Liberation, and provide stability by formally denying anyone the ability to reinstate legislature.” In other words: make sure no laws are passed. But twenty years is a long time, and some people have grown tired of the Great Liberation. Longing for the old days, they rally behind candidates willing to speak up for conservative ideals, like military protection, social justice, and a system of public courts.
Others are less inclined. Many have benefited from the Great Liberation; none more so than the Locust Union, a consortium of corporations that have long surpassed their competition in size. Just as much an army as a company, the Locust Union was once the main opponent for the Liberation’s repeal; with Benjamin Maroon at the helm, none even dared suggest anything but preserving Fitzpatrick Felderman’s legacy. But Maroon is long gone, replaced by the reformer Garrison Grey, who seeks to wash out the bloody reputation the Union has created for themselves. Change, some say, is coming.
If only things were ever that simple.
The presidential election is coming up! Here are the candidates:
Garrison Grey
"One should never discount a candidate from the Locust Union as a possible winner of the president's seat. Garrison Grey's predecessor, Benjamin Maroon, briefly sat the seat himself, and although the two couldn't be less alike, only a fool would bet against this candidate. Grey is staunch supporter of the Great Liberation, and the Locust Union is the largest member of the Tradewealth."
– Jeremy Croquette, professor of political science at the University of Calimo
Cyrilos
"It has been three decades since the war of Aruna and Vidal, which ended when the latter world was incinerated from above by the former. Since then, only people from Aruna has sat in the president's seat, making Cyrilos a watershed candidate. Though many of his Vidalian peers thirst for vengeance, Cyrilos calls for peace between the two worlds. His credentials are strong, as he has worked as the Vidalian representative in the Tradewealth for the last fifteen years."
– Jeremy Croquette
Belior
"Belior is the dark horse candidate, being the only one of the three candidates who call for a repeal for the Great Liberation. A former Black Night operative and decorated soldier, Belior is the worker's candidate. If elected president, he promises to reinstate the sector's government, recreating several public programs and agencies, the latter including schools, hospitals, as well as a military, courts system and welfare net."
– Jeremy Croquette
Who has your vote?
Looks awesome!! Glad you are back at it!!
Belior for prez
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Cyrilos/Belior minority government only option.
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
It's Garrison Grey and Cyrilos who are the non-government candidates. Belior wants to reinstate the government.
So I have an outline for the story now, with a rough idea of what each mission be about, and what heroes will be playable. A lot of details are missing, but having a finished outline does speed things up. I won't be able to start making missions until late August, though.
There will be 3 heroes from each race, plus a mission with all heroes from all three races. The election will be going on in the background, then slowly become a larger part of the main story.
In reply to EivindL:
The condensed Custom Campaign Initiative is on this Google Sheet!
List of my Custom campaign text reviews (warning: only the first half of each is serious)
Well, not dictator, precisely. The president's job is mostly symbolic, though those who run on a non-government platform has to ensure no laws are passed. Belior is a break from that, as he essentially proposes a more leftist system.
Apparently having a baseline, functioning government is leftist in your sci-fi wild west! This also sounds like a spiritual prequel to the Perfect Soldiers universe where there is no government and giant, nebulous corporations mandate how people live with no oversight to their moral hazard.
Visit my channel where I showcase custom content! Send me a PM or respond to my YouTube thread if you'd like to see your map/s on my channel (eventually!)
Glad to hear that you are back at it. Seems like you have something interesting going on here and set in a new universe.
By the way. did you ever consider making the perfect soldier taking place in blizzards starcraft universe?
Custom Campaign initiative StarCraft: Pandora , StarCraft: Replicant
I'm not too fond of in-universe stories, to be honest, with a few exceptions. It feels like fan fiction to me, and I like the freedom of not being constrained by an already existing story.
The connection to PS is not unintentional. After I completed the campaign, I started writing down the story in novel form. However, the novel story is much more vast, with more characters, details and a deeper background. A lot of the stuff you'll see in this campaign will be stuff from that story that is not found in PS, hence the similarities.
I did play with the idea of integrating this into the PS campaign, first by adding "in-between" missions that would make the story wider, so to speak. However, I felt that would require too much of the player, as I would essentially ask him to play a remix of the old story with both old and new parts. Making Nemesis a sequel was another idea, but I didn't want to ask the player to play 30 missions to play this. Besides, this is more RPG-based, anyway.
Small update: I'll have the editor available soon enough. However, I'm not quite ready to start yet. I have the outline for the story, but not for any mission, and I need to refamiliarize myself with the editor as well.
I thoroughly enjoyed the Perfect Soldiers Campaign. I originally just watched it on Jayborino's channel, but that inspired me to get it and play myself. It was fantastic and formed my own inspiration to build my campaign project (which has been going for a long time but is still going). I look forward to seeing more, EivindL.
Ohhh, I can't wait to see where this goes, all of luck to you EivindL!
Random Guy.