It's not that I don't like long cutscenes. I just don't like long cutscenes where it's only shot-reverse-shot of characters talking. It's almost always exposition. It's pretty much impossible to show emotive character animation. And I also have to read through the dialogue in the speed set by the cutscene.
It's also the fact that many cutscenes will linger for long stretches of time on scenes that will make my computer just chug.
And regarding 30 minute cutscenes... wow... I have no idea what to say to that
I told you this on discord but I might as well tell you here as well.
I started a revisit of your campaign and have recorded missions 1-9 in the span of a few short days. I started this revisit to re-learn the flow of your maps and the abilities of the heroes. So far, everything has gone smoothly except for missions 5 and 6 where I forgot to record the game audio. I decided not to rerecord since I did quite well in both missions.
So far, Mission 5: Departure is still my favorite mission. There's not a lot of downtime so things don't get really boring but at the same time, there's just enough down time that I can catch my breath. The slow ramp up in difficulty felt just right for its place in the story while still providing a lot of challenge. There's still no reason to take the expansion, though. I don't know if it's different on brutal but I never feel like I don't have enough units to deal with any threats - I always have enough of an economy to defend my based and the APC.
Mission 8: The Wandering Shadow has become my least favorite mission. I don't know if my mindset while playing video games simply changed but all the waiting around, the punishment for making mistakes, the reloading of saves - it just seemed to frustrate me more and more. It doesn't help that there are a number of unskippable cutscenes in this mission.
I'm also pleased to say that I'm performing much better at the Zerg missions now. I'm not sure if you recall but I had a terrible time playing through the Zerg missions when I first played. I have since gotten better at playing starcraft in general and it seems to alleviate a lot of my troubles playing through those two zerg missions. I'm unsure about how much better I'll fare with mission 12 and 13, though.
Once I get to and finish recording mission 15, I'll jump into the new missions. From what I remember, every new mission as at least five minutes of dialogue cutscenes. I'm unsure of how well I'll respond to that during a recording but I'll deal with that when I get to it.
I'm watching this and am impressed by the attention to detail being put into the terraining, but at the same time, I can't help but wonder how it would run on low-end computers. I could barely get a stable 30 fps on many Annihilation missions on low graphics and my computer has notably better specs than the minimum requirements. I can only imagine how much worse it'd be for people who do have minimum requirement computers.
Sorry this was late. I wanted it up by this morning but I forgot to publish it and then everything just slipped my mind until now. Anyway, mission 12 (as I said, no video for mission 11. I might make a multi-part on in the future but no promises)
I definitely misread the tip. I'll try to make use of it more in my video of it. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law came into effect when I attempted to record footage so it might take me a couple of tries before I have a recording ready.
Edit 1
I got a recording done. I'll be releasing missions 9-15 all this week (except for mission 11 which I don't enjoy playing unless I have a podcast playing over it so no video for that)
Edit 2
Here's mission 9. The others will be up in the next few days
Edit 3
Mission 10 part 1. This has been the longest recording I've ever done, needing to split it into two videos
Edit 4
Mission 10 part 2. I loved the base defense. Tied with Mission 5 as my favorite mission
Ah, I must have misunderstood what the tip said. Let me get this straight. Do they decloak when they attack or do they decloak when something attacks them?
Well, they don't necessarily have to be part of the choices at the start of the mission. You can just have adepts in the Gateway unit selection in addition to the Stalker/Dragoon/Instigator. It's not like having it there will make people not want to use other units more (except for me as I'd probably start weeding out my Zealot numbers in favor of Adepts as the mission progresses as I start floating more and more gas.)
Also, Psi-transfer is a great ability if only for the push potential. I'd much rather transfer a ball of adepts into the middle of a fortified line of defenses than run a bunch of Zealots in who'll path block me when I try to stutter step in.
Edit 1
Attempted mission 15. Really big attack waves and the enemy fortifications are hard to push into - basically the difficulty I expected to get in the previous mission. I should probably try to practice a little before I record so I don't experience the same problem as with mission 13 when it took me 16 hours worth of attempted recordings before I got it right.
Edit 2
Just finished mission 15. Had to play a couple of times to get some data. Compiled a list of where the attacks will come from and the approximate time they'd arrive so I could pre-place my units there and not lose all my cannons immediately.
For this mission, I used Sentinel, Stalker, Energizer, Immortal, Phoenix Dark Archon. The Phoenix helped immobilize most of the ground units and helped take out the air units. Immortal/Sentinel were just for army sustainability. The Stalkers were mostly for early game defense + anti-air as blink-micro with the shield-regen gave them incredible staying power. I stopped making them when I had enough Phoenix and Immortals. The Dark Archon was basically my way of eliminating priority targets in the most efficient way possible - that is to say, mind controlling them.
By the end of the macro section, I had a small fleet of Carriers, and quite a number of Colossi, all of which I incidentally did not make, in addition to the above units. Wasn't necessarily easy, but it had this reverse difficulty wherein the later I played into the mission, the easier it got.
The micro section was challenging - and perhaps the most challenging part of it was keeping your marines alive. It's more hassle than it's worth as your heroes are tanky and powerful enough that an extra 9 damage per second is negligible - especially considering how Medics will sometimes waste their heal on them rather than Reeves and Baldwin who have no reliable self-heal.
I'm loving the change to having Reeves be first in the command priority. Dealing with attack waves is so much easier now.
I haven't had a chance to use the cloaking field ability. I assume you'd use it to run Baldwin in range of a bunker to plant C4 and then quickly run him out but I currently don't have the hands to micro that reliably. I can't even use it defensively sort of like burrow-micro or drop-ship-micro since the cloak expires when the affected unit attacks.
In any case, it was a surprisingly fun mission. The increase in challenge was abrupt, but not unwelcome - especially after the previous mission
Well, I wanted to get a taste of the mission. I remember Jayborino having a hard time with it so I got worried. My worries were misplaced, though, as hard mode wasn't particularly hard. The biggest threat to me was pushing into a base right as they send an attack wave.
The opening cutscene was really long but it didn't really bother me. It was at the start instead of in the middle of the mission so I guess that's one big thing. Another big thing is how much character the dialogue has. Reeves, Baldwin, and Rhik have a certain synergy to them whenever they have scenes together. Similarly, Khaduros' Honorâ„¢ and straightforward thinking makes for a good foil to the Terrans' usual stoic back-and-forths. One negative is that Ferring and Arrow are still pretty bland in terms of personality (though the previous missions show hints of interesting details about them.)
Anyway, early into the mission, I didn't really make that many units and focused on getting saturated. Once I got my economy going, I made army until I ran out of one of the two resources. Waited for the next attack wave to come, and after that, pushed into a base. Rinse repeat until completion. Of course, I took out the north eastern base first and immediately put down a Nexus and two Assimilators. After that, I took out the lower middle base and waited for a bit to replenish lost units before going up and destroying the upper middle base. Then I dropped a Nexus at the lower middle base and waited in front of the ramp I was going to push into. After maxing out, I F2ed my army and stutter-stepped towards the objective.
Composition wise, I really like how flexible this mission is. You can use almost any combination of Gateway, Robotics, and Stargate units.
For my hard mode playthrough of this mission, I used Sentinel/Dragoon/Havoc/Immortal/Mirage. Said composition has ridiculous sustain and damage output, making this entire mission just easy enough that I didn't notice the difference between normal and hard.
Small complaint: Where are the Adepts? It doesn't even have to be the campaign adepts, I just want adepts. They're great units.
In any case, this was a great mission. A little easier than I expected it to be but still pretty fun. It also has a really long cutscene that I happened to enjoy. Good job
Personally, I really like low graphics settings. It gives the models and textures are most saturated, sort of cell-shaded look. I've replayed all your missions on low shaders and so far, only the Callithus missions require highers graphics settings due to the ambient lighting effects. Besides, I value performance and gameplay much more than aesthetics. And think of it like this: if your campaign can look good on low graphics settings then how much better would it look on high?
Edit 1
New video up!
Edit 2
Just finished mission 14. Played on normal though. Surprisingly easy. (Am I supposed to be able to take all of the bases in this mission because I did)
Gonna try again on hard.
Welp, I reached the Annihilator fight with a shit ton of Queens and Hydralisks and slowly bled out units until I was left with only Krayen. I forgot to build a spire and amass Mutalisks, unfortunately, so I had to split my forces to both defend my mining bases and attack the Annihilator at the same time.
So I'm not supposed to push into the base south of your eastern expansion? I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to go to that base. That's the only way I can think of to get to the south eastern generator thing
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In reply to Forge_User_31630701:
It's not that I don't like long cutscenes. I just don't like long cutscenes where it's only shot-reverse-shot of characters talking. It's almost always exposition. It's pretty much impossible to show emotive character animation. And I also have to read through the dialogue in the speed set by the cutscene.
It's also the fact that many cutscenes will linger for long stretches of time on scenes that will make my computer just chug.
And regarding 30 minute cutscenes... wow... I have no idea what to say to that
I told you this on discord but I might as well tell you here as well.
I started a revisit of your campaign and have recorded missions 1-9 in the span of a few short days. I started this revisit to re-learn the flow of your maps and the abilities of the heroes. So far, everything has gone smoothly except for missions 5 and 6 where I forgot to record the game audio. I decided not to rerecord since I did quite well in both missions.
So far, Mission 5: Departure is still my favorite mission. There's not a lot of downtime so things don't get really boring but at the same time, there's just enough down time that I can catch my breath. The slow ramp up in difficulty felt just right for its place in the story while still providing a lot of challenge. There's still no reason to take the expansion, though. I don't know if it's different on brutal but I never feel like I don't have enough units to deal with any threats - I always have enough of an economy to defend my based and the APC.
Mission 8: The Wandering Shadow has become my least favorite mission. I don't know if my mindset while playing video games simply changed but all the waiting around, the punishment for making mistakes, the reloading of saves - it just seemed to frustrate me more and more. It doesn't help that there are a number of unskippable cutscenes in this mission.
I'm also pleased to say that I'm performing much better at the Zerg missions now. I'm not sure if you recall but I had a terrible time playing through the Zerg missions when I first played. I have since gotten better at playing starcraft in general and it seems to alleviate a lot of my troubles playing through those two zerg missions. I'm unsure about how much better I'll fare with mission 12 and 13, though.
Once I get to and finish recording mission 15, I'll jump into the new missions. From what I remember, every new mission as at least five minutes of dialogue cutscenes. I'm unsure of how well I'll respond to that during a recording but I'll deal with that when I get to it.
I'm watching this and am impressed by the attention to detail being put into the terraining, but at the same time, I can't help but wonder how it would run on low-end computers. I could barely get a stable 30 fps on many Annihilation missions on low graphics and my computer has notably better specs than the minimum requirements. I can only imagine how much worse it'd be for people who do have minimum requirement computers.
As expected, I can't play it... sigh...
It's sad I won't be able to play it but I'm very excited for Jayborino's playthrough of it (and possibly Deltron's as well)
@DudkiSC2: Go
@deltronLive: Go
I meant that this is the the first Zerg mission I enjoyed. Most of these I liked a lot - with my favorites being
1st - 5 / 10
3rd - 9
4th - 15 / 13
Edit 1
Video for mission 13 is up!
Edit 2
Here's mission 14
Edit 3
Finally, here is the last mission
Bumping since it's been a few days now
Sorry this was late. I wanted it up by this morning but I forgot to publish it and then everything just slipped my mind until now. Anyway, mission 12 (as I said, no video for mission 11. I might make a multi-part on in the future but no promises)
@DudkiSC2: Go
I definitely misread the tip. I'll try to make use of it more in my video of it. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law came into effect when I attempted to record footage so it might take me a couple of tries before I have a recording ready.
Edit 1
I got a recording done. I'll be releasing missions 9-15 all this week (except for mission 11 which I don't enjoy playing unless I have a podcast playing over it so no video for that)
Edit 2
Here's mission 9. The others will be up in the next few days
Edit 3
Mission 10 part 1. This has been the longest recording I've ever done, needing to split it into two videos
Edit 4
Mission 10 part 2. I loved the base defense. Tied with Mission 5 as my favorite mission
@DudkiSC2: Go
Ah, I must have misunderstood what the tip said. Let me get this straight. Do they decloak when they attack or do they decloak when something attacks them?
@DudkiSC2: Go
Well, they don't necessarily have to be part of the choices at the start of the mission. You can just have adepts in the Gateway unit selection in addition to the Stalker/Dragoon/Instigator. It's not like having it there will make people not want to use other units more (except for me as I'd probably start weeding out my Zealot numbers in favor of Adepts as the mission progresses as I start floating more and more gas.)
Also, Psi-transfer is a great ability if only for the push potential. I'd much rather transfer a ball of adepts into the middle of a fortified line of defenses than run a bunch of Zealots in who'll path block me when I try to stutter step in.
Edit 1
Attempted mission 15. Really big attack waves and the enemy fortifications are hard to push into - basically the difficulty I expected to get in the previous mission. I should probably try to practice a little before I record so I don't experience the same problem as with mission 13 when it took me 16 hours worth of attempted recordings before I got it right.
Edit 2
Just finished mission 15. Had to play a couple of times to get some data. Compiled a list of where the attacks will come from and the approximate time they'd arrive so I could pre-place my units there and not lose all my cannons immediately.
For this mission, I used Sentinel, Stalker, Energizer, Immortal, Phoenix Dark Archon. The Phoenix helped immobilize most of the ground units and helped take out the air units. Immortal/Sentinel were just for army sustainability. The Stalkers were mostly for early game defense + anti-air as blink-micro with the shield-regen gave them incredible staying power. I stopped making them when I had enough Phoenix and Immortals. The Dark Archon was basically my way of eliminating priority targets in the most efficient way possible - that is to say, mind controlling them.
By the end of the macro section, I had a small fleet of Carriers, and quite a number of Colossi, all of which I incidentally did not make, in addition to the above units. Wasn't necessarily easy, but it had this reverse difficulty wherein the later I played into the mission, the easier it got.
The micro section was challenging - and perhaps the most challenging part of it was keeping your marines alive. It's more hassle than it's worth as your heroes are tanky and powerful enough that an extra 9 damage per second is negligible - especially considering how Medics will sometimes waste their heal on them rather than Reeves and Baldwin who have no reliable self-heal.
I'm loving the change to having Reeves be first in the command priority. Dealing with attack waves is so much easier now.
I haven't had a chance to use the cloaking field ability. I assume you'd use it to run Baldwin in range of a bunker to plant C4 and then quickly run him out but I currently don't have the hands to micro that reliably. I can't even use it defensively sort of like burrow-micro or drop-ship-micro since the cloak expires when the affected unit attacks.
In any case, it was a surprisingly fun mission. The increase in challenge was abrupt, but not unwelcome - especially after the previous mission
Well, I wanted to get a taste of the mission. I remember Jayborino having a hard time with it so I got worried. My worries were misplaced, though, as hard mode wasn't particularly hard. The biggest threat to me was pushing into a base right as they send an attack wave.
The opening cutscene was really long but it didn't really bother me. It was at the start instead of in the middle of the mission so I guess that's one big thing. Another big thing is how much character the dialogue has. Reeves, Baldwin, and Rhik have a certain synergy to them whenever they have scenes together. Similarly, Khaduros' Honorâ„¢ and straightforward thinking makes for a good foil to the Terrans' usual stoic back-and-forths. One negative is that Ferring and Arrow are still pretty bland in terms of personality (though the previous missions show hints of interesting details about them.)
Anyway, early into the mission, I didn't really make that many units and focused on getting saturated. Once I got my economy going, I made army until I ran out of one of the two resources. Waited for the next attack wave to come, and after that, pushed into a base. Rinse repeat until completion. Of course, I took out the north eastern base first and immediately put down a Nexus and two Assimilators. After that, I took out the lower middle base and waited for a bit to replenish lost units before going up and destroying the upper middle base. Then I dropped a Nexus at the lower middle base and waited in front of the ramp I was going to push into. After maxing out, I F2ed my army and stutter-stepped towards the objective.
Composition wise, I really like how flexible this mission is. You can use almost any combination of Gateway, Robotics, and Stargate units.
For my hard mode playthrough of this mission, I used Sentinel/Dragoon/Havoc/Immortal/Mirage. Said composition has ridiculous sustain and damage output, making this entire mission just easy enough that I didn't notice the difference between normal and hard.
Small complaint: Where are the Adepts? It doesn't even have to be the campaign adepts, I just want adepts. They're great units.
In any case, this was a great mission. A little easier than I expected it to be but still pretty fun. It also has a really long cutscene that I happened to enjoy. Good job
@DudkiSC2: Go
Personally, I really like low graphics settings. It gives the models and textures are most saturated, sort of cell-shaded look. I've replayed all your missions on low shaders and so far, only the Callithus missions require highers graphics settings due to the ambient lighting effects. Besides, I value performance and gameplay much more than aesthetics. And think of it like this: if your campaign can look good on low graphics settings then how much better would it look on high?
Edit 1
New video up!
Edit 2
Just finished mission 14. Played on normal though. Surprisingly easy. (Am I supposed to be able to take all of the bases in this mission because I did)
Gonna try again on hard.
@DudkiSC2: Go
Krayen died shortly after that army wipe. I stopped playing by then
Edit
SUCCESS! VICTORY FUCKING ACHIEVED!
@DudkiSC2: Go
Welp, I reached the Annihilator fight with a shit ton of Queens and Hydralisks and slowly bled out units until I was left with only Krayen. I forgot to build a spire and amass Mutalisks, unfortunately, so I had to split my forces to both defend my mining bases and attack the Annihilator at the same time.
@DudkiSC2: Go
So I'm not supposed to push into the base south of your eastern expansion? I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to go to that base. That's the only way I can think of to get to the south eastern generator thing