SC2Mapster

A great little map with a lot of charm.  It does everything well.  Especially love the variety in enemy defenses, too many maps it just feels like you're just going through harder varients of the same thing.

Minor gameplay improvements: the defending the objective enemies do need to get upgrades.  The second section is just a bit too easy to steamroll, even on brutal.

Minor English improvements are still needed.

Thoughts of Chaos is the epic conclusion to The Antioch Chronicles, a large-scale custom campaign.  TiC weaves together a narrative made by many different characters from different faction and have them slowly converge until the finale.  It features acceptable voice acting (the protoss voices will grow on you, and it gets better in later missions), and quality editor work (terraining, models, etc), as well as a well done and entertaining story (despite the ending being too cliche) by my admittedly low standards. 

However, any fun that one would normally get from the story is instead leeched away by 110% mediocre gameplay, which mostly seems like a way to pass the time between story segments rather than engaging and enjoyable.

The gameplay, first and foremost, suffers from slow pacing.  There's plenty of long winded backtracking through empty and very weakly defended areas in both macro and micro missions.  Here's an example: TiC has a stealth mission, reminiscent of HotS' ship infiltration mission.  However, instead of combat, you're greeted with (admittedly well-thought out) puzzles, halfhearted enemy detection patrols (you don't interact with the guards other than just walking out of their zones), and halfhearted kill defenseless, undefended structure to progress.  It got to a point where I tried to break the monotony by attacking some random guards and escaping the detectors gaze.  This gets back to what I previously said about "waiting x minutes", you're moving through the ship for a certain duration to get to the next puzzle, enjoyable gameplay be damned.

Difficulty, like many aspects of gameplay, didn't seem to get much thought either.  "Hard" in TiC means "WoL casual".  Many hero units are broken, and with minimal micro they can multiply a small force's effectiveness by tenfold.  Many missions can be beat by getting 10-20 units and just steadily rolling across the map.  But in two missions it's very, very, hard, unless you understand the correct choices you need to beat the mission (which would require editor diving or some really lucky guesses).  Of course, such information is only going to come to you once you lose the mission once.  As an example, there's a holdout that features extremely high tech ground units (archons, reavers, ultralisks) with a few air superiority fighters and dropships.  Suddenly, on the last few waves, the mission throws the curveball of 2 carriers (capital ships) per wave.  Hopefully you built enough anti-air that you couldn't know that you'd ever use.  If there had been any hint in an earlier wave, I would have enjoyed the mission.  It was on my skill level, a nice terran holdout with some interesting twists. Due to not seeing any indication, I fortified my tank line and suffered, and lost a lot of .

Bosses have HUMONGOUS HP bars, backed up by tiny amounts of damage so that phase transitions, many of which are accompanied a cutscenes or "action pauses", are played a significant duration apart (have to have SOME space between emotional moments).  Combine this with high cooldown abilities, and I had trouble staying alert during boss battles, as rarely they did anything cool, interesting, or required effort to dodge.

In closing (TL;DR): DO NOT PLAY Thoughts in Chaos if you're looking for a campaign that gives you something to do.  If you must see the story because you've seen the first two (and you should see TiC in that case), use cheats (i.e."move" or "god") or watch Jayborino's videos to avoid interacting with the gameplay as much as possible.

There's a severe difficulty spike from the too easy missions of 3-0 to 3-whatever and the excavation (dig too deep or something).

In sins of our fathers, Tempest shield heals an additional 200 shield as well as increasing current+max shield by 200, the tooltip does not mention this.

Breaking down each mission in a bit of detail (memory is fairly shaky):

• Protoss holdout/micro: Losses never really mean anything, defense ends before missing units ever come into play.
• Moloch infiltration: Too slow pacing.  Mere stealth crawling is unentertaining and just serves to extend the game time
• Boss memory dive: outside of Jepok playing in red, there isn't much you can do to lose this if you just spam your healing. 
• Terran jailbreak: main point of concern is that you can to the end of the nexus's exit hallway and still have to wait for enemies to spawn before leaving. I thought the point was to exit quickly, not to make sure that we get a good KDR?
• The grey: healing outdoes most ranged units (melee is simple to kite), 5 second stun is incredibly powerful, all units are bio so even if you somehow get on the back foot you can just Dark Archon Maelstrom to win. 
• Terran infiltration: having +50 more range than marines and a slow makes post-bots trivial.  

Success breeds jealousy.

Everything works as it should it seems. May want to tone down the constant stream of units trying to "rebuild" in favour of better attack waves.

Text scroll could use improvement, if possible.  I detest the slow scroll.  Put the text up all at once.

Okay tried it again after my initial complaints.  Manged to beat it on hard with an immortal/archon deathball.  Spent solarite on resource income boost first, so quickly got 3 forges+ tech up and running, switched to army-based solarite afterwards.  Focussed on teleporting to kill the caves first so I only got 2 dropperlords.  Made the game feel a lot easier.

Closing order of caves. 

Caves opening on units created is probably too abusable.  For example, I purposefully didn't hit the first cap until just before I closed cave 6.  On the other hand, caves opening on units created is painful if you lose a lot of units early (zealot heavy strats), setting you back farther. Similarly, players have an incentive to close the stronger caves first.

Some of the caves may need reworking to allow more units to hit them, or so you can put a few immortals off on the side to constantly whittle down hp.  Cave 3 in particular.

Bug found: opening both menu's and closing one keeps one menu open but the game unpauses.

I have a lot of problems with the maps design.  Why do rocks gain 500 hp per cave sealed? There is no warning about caves becoming aggressive when attacked.  Attacks scaling from 3 zerglings to 2 ultralisks is not OK when the player does not know about it and tries to seal one off early.  The mastery allowing high templar to cost 150/50 instead of 50/150 is utterly broken given a generally larger mineral bank than vespene bank, making high archons be more useful than zealots and stalkers. There doesn't seem to be a natural progression, game is extremely easy, then has a epic difficulty spike requiring huge map control/multitasking when those pesky droplords start heading out.  (Why are they damage immune for so long? Why does psi storm only do 1 damage/tick to them instead of 10?)

The best way to play this is to build up as high as you can go before the first base mines out, port to seal off the ovie spawn caves, then win.

• Caster full energy does not work on archons with psistorm after merging.
• The shield mastery causes units to warp in with 20 shield missing
• Minor nitpick, but ending punctuation is missing from a lot of lines.
• A bunch of the overlords may not send units to base, causing incredible lag

 Edit (because this does deserve some praise):

The observer hero pairs well with the psi thingy, and does allow some cool tactical maneuvers and can give you multiple points to return to, which is useful on this highly linear map.

All the later caves feel somewhat unique, even if there's too many of them to assign them specific names (There's two dropperlord caves and 3 ling caves, for example)

The auto-researching tech upgrades makes units more exciting faster.  However, this does come at a strategical depth cost, as getting these upgrades are too cheap not to get, especially since you need to tech up to unlock your full unit roster.

Quote from MaskedImposter >>

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwNFMMSLI4xlbWZUZU43OXhBMUE

 

Mapsters 4.5 for Mapcraft 2017 has been significantly updated. Very interested in feedback for anyone who has time. Just about 20 days til contest ends.

 

Some changes of note:

- The end is an actual boss fight now, far different than it was before. So much improved. Type "boss fight" without quotes after you choose difficulty if you want to skip straight to it for testing purposes. 

- Changed the supply max to 100, and added an addition second level upgrade for the healing bots. This makes it easier to keep a fully healed up army.

- Changed the tanks impact indicator to make it more distinct from the grenade ability indicator. So hopefully that'll help the player to know to dodge the tank attacks.

- Lots of other various things I don't remember :P

 

Oh. I see the issues Vastan had.  For me the base seems to have constructed itself (wonder if Vastan prevented the nexus from being built with hold position)

The final cinematic played for me, may just be Vastan's machine.

Problem with looking like alarak cares is that everyone, even his own troops, know that he doesn't.  Heck, even Ji'nara knows better than to cross him.

First off, I'm pretty impressed by the new units and the custom voice acting.  Was unique to say the least.

The mission isn't lacking as well.  Wrathwalkers and vanguards provide spikes in difficulty on demand, and I decided to fight the hybrid and his two lackeys as solo alarak (and won).

For a relatively new hand at the editor, this is a strong first mission, and hopefully once we get into macro missions the fun will remain. 

issues:

• Armored votary doesn't get armor/shield upgrade
• Stalkers don't autocast their autocast ability
• Setting the game speed to faster (force of habit/more exciting micro) screws with dialogue triggers

small issues:

"youareatraitor"  and "noitcan'tbe" - feels to fast

"This campaign is placed in time one year after epilogue of Legacy of the Void" -> ""This campaign is placed one year after the epilogue of Legacy of the Void"

"Alarak declined the alliance"

"true strenght" -> "true strength"

"to clear it from trees" -> "clear the trees"

"could damage your force" -> "could damage your forces"

"briefs his forces inside the warchamber"

"confrontation with the Hybrid" 

"if anyone other" -> "if anyone else"

"surrending" -> "surrendering"

Disclaimer: Everything you are about to see is work in progress, entirely consisting of placeholder assets and subject to drastic change and improvement. Do not expect too much fancy UI or polish quite yet.

The Metruh Engine is the most advanced Third Person Multiplayer RPG Engine ever developed for Starcraft 2. Ive been working on and off on this massive endeavour since 2013, though development of it has really kicked into gear again in the last few months.

People got a first glimpse at the engine when I announced "Transformers: Open World", however, it allows for far more than what you have seen so far. I think now is a good time to finally give the engine a proper presentation.

THE PURPOSE

The Metruh Engine will serve as a framework for me to create one of the largest Starcraft 2 mods of all time, a massive multiplayer RPG. Ive been working on this project also since 2013 and it will have a scale and polish only rivaled by "Starcraft: Universe" itself.

While the engine can be used effectively to create all kinds of third person Starcraft 2 games, it was specifically made for that project of mine.

THE ENGINE

----

1 - Combat System and Enemy AI

The Metruh Engine features an intricate melee action combat system that can be best described as a very simplified version of Dark Souls like combat. The AI in this system is intelligent, its not just blindly attacking but also reacting to your attacks, dodging them or using special abilities.

The combat is centered around these core pillars:

- Melee Attacks

- Ranged Attacks

- Dodging

- Stunning

- Special Abilities

- Intelligent enemy AI

Enemies telegraph their stronger attacks so you know what you will have to dodge in order to avoid getting stunned, likewise, your more powerfull attacks will also stun enemies. The combat system is easy to learn, but has a good amout of depth to it. Gamechanging special abilities will also completely change the flow of combat, depending on what abilities you are running with.

The combat system is still a work in progress and will see some major improvements in the future. I want it to feel perfect by the end.

2 - Progression System

Character progress is defined by the following things:

- Skill points that you earn by killing enemies/completing quests/doing other stuff. You can spend those points to increase either health, damage or your magical abilities.

- Perk points are earned when you level up. You can spend perks to gain powerful bonuses for your character.

- Acquiring Abilities. The game is designed around powerful abilities which you can gain that will change up how you view both combat and the world as a whole.

3 - Dialog/NPC System

The engine allows for the quick creation of NPCs that you can converse in a dialog system with. The dialog system isnt amazingly complex, but it gets the job done.

When you talk to an NPC, you are presented with a variety of dialog choices. Branching dialog isnt implemented and probably never will be seeing how it doesnt fit into my vision for the game. It is not supposed to be a hardcore RPG, so I dont think branching dialog options are necessary.

NPCs can be easily set up to react to the world around them. You can ask them for rumors, which will give you hints to whats happening out there in the world and find out things you would otherwise miss. This process can be randomized, so that its always rewarding to go after rumors.

The white dialog buttons are quests.

The presentation of the dialog system is due for an update, which I will most likely get on soon.

4 - Quest System

NPCs can give you quests. Quests can be set up to be hand-made, however, Ive also implemented a fully randomized quest system in the engine, meaning you will never run out of quests to complete. However, even randomized quests carry over from session to session, meaning the world will stay consistent even if you relog. This was hell to program, but its well worth it.

Quests will be saved in your questlog, progression in the quest will be noted in the Quest log.

5 - Puzzle and Doors System

 
The gameplay in the finished game will consist of a variety of activities. Ive created a puzzle system that easily allows me to create platform puzzles where you need to place/push objects on platforms in order to achieve a goal, like opening a door. While completely unique puzzles will still be made for the game, this system is a great starting point to fill the world with interesting challenges besides enemies.

Progress of the puzzles is saved per player, meaning if one player solves a puzzle, that puzzle will appear always solved to him, while other players will still see the puzzles as unsolved.

6 - Character System

Of course, you will be able to create multiple characters (up to six) and your entire progress is saved. Quests (even randomized ones you havent accepted) and progression in puzzles are carried over, ensuring that the world will be in exactly the same state you left it in when you last logged in.

7 - Map System

Using the map, you will be able to see where you are in the world. You will also be able to discover new locations which will then be marked on your map. This system is currently beeing finalized.

--

More to come at a later date

--

AVAILABILITY OF THE ENGINE

Currently, I have no plans to release the engine to the public, as it was created for my project specifically. However, after that project is done, I might be willing to give out the engine to people who want to create interesting projects with it. That would most likely occur on a case by case basis, though.

TESTING AND FEEDBACK

I am always looking for feedback and capable testers. Feel free to post feedback into this thread, I would greatly appreciate it. If you want to help test the engine, I do regular testing sessions almost every weekend over on the SC2mapster Discord channel.

CLOSING WORDS

The Metruh Engine isnt complete yet, however, it is pretty close to completion now and progress is going fast. I still have to add a few more systems and make some changes to the existing ones, but after that is done, I can finally begin developing it into the game Ive always dreamed of making.

Keep in mind that what you see here in this thread is purely supposed to look servicable for the purpose of testing. The amout of polish and scale that I will try to achieve with the finished product will be something that has not been seen on the Starcraft 2 Arcade ever before. You will believe it when you see it.

I am in the processing of creating a campaign for Terran that sets back 100-200 years before old dominion and the confederation took over.  In this campaign we see how the Terrans progressed in technology and how they began interest in research on the Zerg. As units were re-purposed in the later years vs the Zerg we also see how the first began.

Hiya guys!  At long last I'm pleased to bring out the first mission for my Starcraft: Time Splitters campaign. Its my first project in the map making business.

• Here you can give me feedback on the missions (and/or the mod).
  Please report bugs that you come across, however please take a small look at the bottom of this post because there's several thing I'm already aware of.
• Also, please let me know what you think about the map. What do you like, what do you think requires attention.
• If you happen to have suggestions or ideas I'm also open for them.

I hope you have fun playing.

Cheers!

[Edit] Required mod-file and first map now uploaded and awaiting approval.

Known issues

- Some units may have wrong/no death effects

Hello everyone, I've just finished the first 3 missions of my micro-focused campaign, it's quite a dynamic affair with lots of triggers to it and a focus on fast and challenging gameplay above all, so I invite you to have a look at the project page and the trailer for more details.

https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/the-ghost-crew

Hello all who are interested!  I am creating an updated list of campaigns new and old to be easily navigable and digestible.  Surely, I have made some mistakes and/or left people out.  Please recommend corrections where necessary and also let me know if you feel your campaign needs to be re-categorized.  Warcraft 3 list incoming separately.

EDIT: Added links.  Use TChosen's googledoc or copy/paste this list to share if you feel inclined.

I used common sense when putting something in the "Completed/Near-Completed" list, such as Odyssey and Annihilation.  These are closer to complete than not and also are very high quality.  Most campaigns in stasis have some cool ideas and are definitely worth a play even if many are abandoned.

First off, here is a basic, text installation guide that also contains links to videos if that is more conducive for you.

StarCraft 1 Remakes
StarCraft: Mass Recall (various authors)
Enslavers/Dark Vengeance (opupu)
StarCraft: Enslavers Redux (OmegaWeaponX85)


Complete/Near Complete Campaigns
Perfect Soldiers (EivindL)
Shadow of the Xel'Naga (OutsiderXE) - on the Arcade
Lifeforce (Bilxor)

Annihilation (DudkiSC2)
Odyssey (CooperHawkes)
Subjection (Gradius) - on the Arcade
Marauders! (acidragoon)
Time Convergence (VastanX)
Replicant Episode IV (Hultamanble)
Replicant Episode V (Hultamanble)

Replicant Episode VI (Hultamanble)
Pandora (Hultmanable)
Prime Resurgence (Revolution)
Unification of Purifiers (CybrosX)
Vortex of the Void (CybrosX)
Brood's Wrath (CybrosX)
Shadow of the Brood (CybrosX)
Proditor (nimbusqwe)
The Lost of Aiur (Gangrene) - on the Arcade
The Hammer of Dawn (Edhriano)
Hand of Humanity (Terhonator)
Bio-Tech Company (njordys)
Mapsters (MaskedImposter) - on the Arcade
Antioch Chronicles Remastered (Team Antioch)

Noir: Automata (Edhriano)

Antioch Remastered: Thoughts in Chaos (Team Antioch)
Enslavers Redux 4.0 (OmegaWeaponX85)

Campaigns in Progress
Vorazun Campaign (PowercoreX64)
Shadow of Liberty (PowercoreX64)
Dawn of Conflict (CybrosX)
StarCraft 2 Redux (Operative7646)
Unsung Rebels (aZergbaneling)

Survivors (GnaReffotsirk)


Campaigns in Stasis
A Silent Scream (DatGamesense)
Ignos (njordys)
Evolution of the Swarm (CybrosX)

Wrath of the Tal'Darim (CybrosX)
Ascendancy (Atticuskirk)
Limpid (RodentWearingHat)
Morals (RobustProgram)
Discord (Baelethal)
Revenants (Hybrid Team)
Origins (Gradius)
Legacy of Liberty (RedRookLord)
Xeyed Nascency (Supernova134)
Brood (Debe2233)
Scattered (Daequeous)
Ashes of Freedom (designerdougm)

Anxiously Waiting

everything listed under In Progress above

LifeForce Pt 2

Legacy of the Confederation (MIA, moving to stasis soon)

Starcraft II: Unsung Rebels

Overview

Hello SC2Mapster community!

I didn't want to announce this project until it was quite a bit further in development, but with the end of summer comes a drought of free time to invest in continuing this campaign.

The Unsung Rebels campaign is a custom campaign where you will play as the leader of an anti-Dominion rebel group called the 7th Squad during the early days of the Second Great War.

It features a storymode similar to that of the Wings of Liberty campaign in addition to its own upgrade panel with improvements for each of the Terran units usable in the campaign, purchasable with credits in the storymode.

The campaign is non-linear; though there is a main story, missions can be played in various orders, up to the choosing of the player.

I recognize that this is a rather ambitious project, especially for one mapmaker. My greatest fear is that this campaign will just be yet another ludicrously ambitious project which ends up never being completed. I hope the Mapster community exists long enough to see through the completion of this project; as Starcraft II is growing less and less popular, that hope seems an optimistic one.

Nonetheless, I hope to complete the next two missions and cinematic for release in reasonable time. My progress, again, will be quite slowed for the next coming months, but I hope a few screenshots may encourage interest in this project. 

Screenshots

Updates

05/06/17

Dependencies
Completely reworked trigger libraries

Storymode 
Planet Agria (agria) - Added conversations

06/04/17

Cinematics 
The Swarm (cinematic02) - Completed

30/03/17

Missions
Ruthless Monsters (tcollins01) - Completed
Angels Save Lives (tcollins02) - Completed
Facility PD-17 (tbriggs01) - In Progress

Cinematics
One (cinematic01) - Completed

The Swarm (cinematic02) - In Progress

Storymode
Planet Agria (agria) - In Progress

Older:

I'll send out next emails tomorrow :)

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!