The mission is now largely feature complete, I've also begun uploading the entire campaign as a set, but to clarify, the version of Backwater Station in the .zip is not new. A new version of Backwater should be coming by the end of this week hopefully.
Change Log
Additions
Added a third and final achievement, "No Marine Left Behind."
Added a safety mechanism that alerts players of the salvage location after 60 seconds of not finding it.
Added new tips.
Changes
APC now waits for a majority of the player's force to be nearby before moving out after bonus objective.
Salvaging parts for autogun repairs is no longer listed as a mission objective.
Adjusted some enemy groups and their locations on hard.
Adjusted the textures in the city at the beginning of the map.
Bugs
Fixed issues where the APC's portrait did not display correctly.
Fixed an issue where the APC would not drive forward if all zerglings at the blockade were killed.
Fixed an issue where hydralisks would spawn during the bonus event on hard.
Added life pickups off the beaten path as a consolation and incentive.
Added new enemy groups.
Added new dialogs for fail states.
Added new dialog for player attacking own APC.
Changes
The map now requires the Legacy.SC2Mod be installed in order to work.
Adjusted existing enemy groups.
Hydralisks have been adjusted to be slightly weaker.
APC driver has been changed to female medivac portrait to coincide with future APC use.
The bonus objective reward is now clear beforehand.
Reduced volume on text sound, removed cinematic subtitles.
Bugs
Fixed an issue where the level would become unplayable under certain conditions.
Fixed an issue where the APC would stop moving under certain conditions.
I didn't have a chance to implement all of the adjustments I wanted to, but there has been a lot of adjustment and polish since 1.2. A lot of the changes are on the way the triggers are setup, a lot of optimization has been done, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, so some features haven't made it in yet. All the major bugs of 1.2 are fixed though.
I don't know how else to describe my problem. I've got a series of points in my level, I re-name them, close the map, re-open and they go back to their old names. All other changes I make are saved without issue, I've tried closing and re-opening multiple times, saving duplicate files etc. Has anyone else run into this phenomenon or have any idea how to work around it?
Absolutely, the map is still in beta, and the feedback is more than appreciated. I'm holding myself to Blizzard standards using WoL as a benchmark. I will look further into each of the potential paths you can take away from the main route, and make sure that it becomes clear they are dead-ends earlier on. I didn't want to block them all off immediately, lest the player feels the hand of the designer, and that is indeed a bad thing.
I was planning to make updates to the terrain on my next pass through, so I'll include more to indicate the path, similar to the dirt tire tracks near the end of the map.
No, I think this may be indeed a bug in the most recent version, I made some changes and added some things last week without sufficient bug testing. I'm working on 1.3 of Wastelands right now, in addition to streamlining the dialog, making updates to some of it, adding support for more fail states on optional objectives etc, I will be addressing all of the current bugs. Sorry you had to go through that!
Mission 02, should .... should be largely bug free! Completion of the mission is far less trigger dependent and I haven't had anyone encounter any bugs yet.
PS. What do you mean about the terrain that's unused precisely? You're talking about the sections that are off the beaten path? There's not really a "point" per se, those sections are just the result of the fact that a winding road can only take up so much of a rectangular map. Obviously I can't use every square inch of the map when creating the path. ( I could have done so with a lot of forcing, but the road would've felt really, really artificially accordioned into that space.) Each of those spots tends to have some large scenery/set pieces for people who do try to go see what's over there, usually with revealers activating when you reach the edge of the area, both to show the set piece, and show that there's really nothing of interest from a gameplay perspective that way. Largely I don't feel that these side paths every detracted from the experience, as most people felt they were directed in the right path, did you encounter any areas where you felt mislead?
Nope! I wouldn't really call this a deliberate hint, but it's definitely more than just a doodad placed somewhere, it may be a painted terrain, multiple doodads or units placed, or an amalgamation of those things, but it's not a single doodad/unit/terrain item. Keep looking after a break perhaps! New (real) hints coming later! Let's get more people looking, if you like searching for Easter Eggs download the map and take a look! There's a prize in it for the first image post!
Nope! (I never noticed that myself, haha, seems it was a random occurrence from the cracked earth texture.) It's something more deliberate and complex than that, but you're getting the right idea of what kind of place it may be in! (On unreachable low or high spots.)
Ah what the heck, here's today's hint:
Easter Egg Hint #3
It's a reference to a popular TV show, I can't be any more specific, for now!
To shed a little light on the above tip, if you're looking hard, you'll still find this whether you've seen the show or not, but you may not know what it is. It's a fairly popular show though.
Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!
Field Characters (Characters)
CConversationState_Indices_Variations_Value
This field can be edited via direct data input, and seems to store the portraits used for each character. Can't figure out how to edit it via the menu, as no field appears for this data as far as I can find. The format is ((Portrait|Portrait2)(Portrait)(Portrait|Portrait2|Portrait3)) if you have 3 characters, one with two portraits, one with one and one with three. The first portrait is always the default.
To clarify, I'm talking about speakers used in conversation data. It's not directly pulling from a list of portraits, and I can't seem to locate a list of speakers anywhere after searching for over an hour. It's totally roadblocked me, and I'm curious if anyone knows how?
Edit: Ended up answering my own question when I wasn't looking for it: The game looks to any "Character" conversation state items for speaker information.
Edit2: Still foggy on where Characters are linked to portrait models and variations.... If anyone knows, I appreciate it! If I figure it out, I will go ahead and edit in here.
A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players!
Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
Excellent suggestion for the achievement, I guarantee that will be one of the three. Bunkers will be introduced in earnest in the next level, where they will be a necessary tool to survive. (There's already some great ways to defend your primary base from the red zerg should you choose to tackle the bonus objective! And the primary Zerg threat isn't a huge issue because you can push forward and capture the much more easily defensible station early on. There will be prods in the final version of the level to keep players from waiting too long to do so also.)
The resource pick-ups were hastily placed, so your feedback is appreciated, I noticed this also watching someone playthrough, given their location they're relatively insignificant by the time someone picks them up. I may boost some of them to give more resources, and place a few more. I was planning to add a truck on the road, I must have forgotten, so thanks for the reminder. :)
As for tech labs vs academies. Yes, I've made the decision to keep some of the SC2 tech the same. What is kept the same and what isn't is still under some deliberation, but suffice to say at the very least, the tech lab will be replacing the academy. A lot of what will be kept are things that are not in conflict with the canon, just things that help to further differentiate the play styles of each race. (Creep spread, addons and lowerable supply depots, warping units in, etc.) The goal is for the campaign to feel like StarCraft 1, while still managing to retain some of the functionality that we love in SC2.
Hey Alex, lots of great feedback in there! Yeah there are some polish issues that are not quite ironed out yet. I think I forgot to put this in the known caveat, but none of the tip or tutorial content is in yet. I really put that on the back burner because it's irrelevant to being able to play test the level. They'll be in, in the next major update to the level.
Regarding the Nomad... Is there solid canon that says the Nomad didn't exist 4 years before SC2? From what I understand it was used in harsh conditions, so it seemed appropriate near the dust bowl. It's used as a junker in SC2 during the mercenary level, I figured anything used as a junker is not new tech. From our perspective it was new in SC2, but lore wise I'm not sure that is the case? A lot of units are new, but anyways, I couldn't find a crashed drop ship or anything, and the landing pad felt absolutely naked without anything on it. I can put generic debris there though if you can point me to the canon about the Nomad. The outhouse is also a good call, I wasn't sure what to put there, and they needed something else, I just figured instead of having to have them open that giant gate they might have an outhouse for quick restroom breaks from guard duty. Maybe I'll put something else there though.
The door issue was fixed in the minor patch, unfortunately it sometimes takes long periods of time for a file to be confirmed, so, sorry about that! It had some other hotfixes also. Weird about the animal skull, I'll fix or remove it. The cliffside path was intentional, if you near the destructible rocks at orange's back door, the firebat will mention you can just continue along the path and avoid the hive entirely. It's the safest, quickest option, destroying the base is unnecessary, and I wanted to keep it that way, but am open to feedback.
Regarding the issue of familiarity with the Zerg! First off, good catch! You're right, this was something I was actually aware of, but to be clear, they did start referring to them as Zerg by this point. Though the UI in some cases called them xenomorphs, the actual characters only referred to them as such in the demo campaign. In the Terran campaign they called them Zerg. I was wary of the use of "Hive cluster" and originally having wrote that scratched it out and referred to it as merely a "hive" also at one point the Adjutant refers to it as a "nest" so I wanted to make it ambiguous, in that they are really not sure what to call it. I also made sure when he called it a hive, that the firebat hesitated, the line is....
SCLAoF02Firebat00023 Firebat We haven't heard back, and it doesn't look good. Seems the zerg have set up some sort of... hive nearby.
At some point they had to start calling them hives, but if this feels unnatural for some people, it's probably too early, I was on the fence about it. I may adjust the line to merely say nest as well.
As far as the hidden resources go, you're right to assume that those are not the Easter eggs. The gas inside the large skeleton, well, where does vespene gas come from? I have no idea honestly, I suppose I should've looked into that, but I assumed it may have been a natural gas of some kind, so putting it near some fossils, ah I was just trying to put a natural gas item somewhere that would make sense (lol.) Was it really odd for you? As far as them all being off the beaten path, yeah that's intentional, they're just little rewards for the player going off the beaten path and exploring. They don't do much, but it's a consolation prize. Nothing worse than leaving your players room to explore and giving them nothing for doing so. (There will very likely be an achievement for collecting all of them, or something in that vein.)
As far as bunkers go, the reason I wanted to avoid using them is that they are a major part of the gameplay in Mission 03 "Desperate Alliances," which is, if you happen to remember from SC1, a holdout mission. This is something I'm still debating on myself, whether or not to allow bunkers, they're not allowed in the original game during this mission, but the Zerg also do not attack. (You do actually, rescue bunkers at Backwater though.) The mission is very easy even without constructing bunkers on casual and normal, and on hard and brutal, not being able to construct bunkers makes the mission more challenging. There is something inherently awkward about letting the player rescue bunkers and not build them though... I will see how everyone feels about this, and consider adding bunkers back in!
Last but not least, the Easter egg! I'm glad that you took some time to look for it, sorry you didn't find it! Keep looking everyone! I wasn't planning to give out a hint this early, but it's only fair as it's a rather difficult one to find.
Easter Egg Hint #1
It's not underneath creep! With this in mind, you now know you won't need to kill any Zerg bases to find it.
0
@AlexO6: Go
PM sent of course, and I received your reply! In other news...
A new version of the Wastelands mission is up!
The mission is now largely feature complete, I've also begun uploading the entire campaign as a set, but to clarify, the version of Backwater Station in the .zip is not new. A new version of Backwater should be coming by the end of this week hopefully.
Change Log
Additions
Changes
Bugs
0
@AlexO6: Go
Nope you haven't got it yet, just keep... Just kidding!
CONGRATULATIONS!
You found it, nice job! Regarding the reward/surprise, I'm heading to the movies now, but I'll PM you later with the details! Awesome job Alex06!
For a more clear image of the hatch in question:
In other news, before I go....
Wastelands Beta Ver1.3 is finally up, lots of big changes!
Change Log
Additions
Changes
Bugs
I didn't have a chance to implement all of the adjustments I wanted to, but there has been a lot of adjustment and polish since 1.2. A lot of the changes are on the way the triggers are setup, a lot of optimization has been done, but it ended up taking a lot longer than I expected, so some features haven't made it in yet. All the major bugs of 1.2 are fixed though.
0
@AlexO6: Go
Such good guesses, you seem to be finding all of the little set pieces I constructed to make the bland areas of the map interesting, that's for sure!!
Still haven't got it yet, but a new hint for intrepid adventurers, before I post Wastelands 1.3 (hopefully within a few hours.)
Easter Egg Hint #4
You will find me among that which can make one man blind and another man see. What is nearby can make one building strong and another cease to be!
0
I don't know how else to describe my problem. I've got a series of points in my level, I re-name them, close the map, re-open and they go back to their old names. All other changes I make are saved without issue, I've tried closing and re-opening multiple times, saving duplicate files etc. Has anyone else run into this phenomenon or have any idea how to work around it?
0
@Mozared: Go
Absolutely, the map is still in beta, and the feedback is more than appreciated. I'm holding myself to Blizzard standards using WoL as a benchmark. I will look further into each of the potential paths you can take away from the main route, and make sure that it becomes clear they are dead-ends earlier on. I didn't want to block them all off immediately, lest the player feels the hand of the designer, and that is indeed a bad thing.
I was planning to make updates to the terrain on my next pass through, so I'll include more to indicate the path, similar to the dirt tire tracks near the end of the map.
0
@Mozared: Go
No, I think this may be indeed a bug in the most recent version, I made some changes and added some things last week without sufficient bug testing. I'm working on 1.3 of Wastelands right now, in addition to streamlining the dialog, making updates to some of it, adding support for more fail states on optional objectives etc, I will be addressing all of the current bugs. Sorry you had to go through that!
Mission 02, should .... should be largely bug free! Completion of the mission is far less trigger dependent and I haven't had anyone encounter any bugs yet.
PS. What do you mean about the terrain that's unused precisely? You're talking about the sections that are off the beaten path? There's not really a "point" per se, those sections are just the result of the fact that a winding road can only take up so much of a rectangular map. Obviously I can't use every square inch of the map when creating the path. ( I could have done so with a lot of forcing, but the road would've felt really, really artificially accordioned into that space.) Each of those spots tends to have some large scenery/set pieces for people who do try to go see what's over there, usually with revealers activating when you reach the edge of the area, both to show the set piece, and show that there's really nothing of interest from a gameplay perspective that way. Largely I don't feel that these side paths every detracted from the experience, as most people felt they were directed in the right path, did you encounter any areas where you felt mislead?
0
@celerisk: Go
http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Tempest
Not a profound thought but...
0
@lolzguy: Go
Nope! I wouldn't really call this a deliberate hint, but it's definitely more than just a doodad placed somewhere, it may be a painted terrain, multiple doodads or units placed, or an amalgamation of those things, but it's not a single doodad/unit/terrain item. Keep looking after a break perhaps! New (real) hints coming later! Let's get more people looking, if you like searching for Easter Eggs download the map and take a look! There's a prize in it for the first image post!
0
@AlexO6: Go
Nope! (I never noticed that myself, haha, seems it was a random occurrence from the cracked earth texture.) It's something more deliberate and complex than that, but you're getting the right idea of what kind of place it may be in! (On unreachable low or high spots.)
Ah what the heck, here's today's hint:
Easter Egg Hint #3
It's a reference to a popular TV show, I can't be any more specific, for now!
To shed a little light on the above tip, if you're looking hard, you'll still find this whether you've seen the show or not, but you may not know what it is. It's a fairly popular show though.
0
@AlexO6: Go
Does that mean you found it, or you have ideas on where to look? I wanted to prevent people from looking in too many places where it was not, because in some ways it can be difficult to see in and of itself. Let's see who finds it first, more tips until someone does! None for now though, but there should be a new one later tonight or tomorrow, depending on when I finish Wastelands 1.3, implementing conversations and removing the hardcoded dialog is proving to be a time consuming task!
0
@designerdougm: Go
Field Characters (Characters) CConversationState_Indices_Variations_Value
This field can be edited via direct data input, and seems to store the portraits used for each character. Can't figure out how to edit it via the menu, as no field appears for this data as far as I can find. The format is ((Portrait|Portrait2)(Portrait)(Portrait|Portrait2|Portrait3)) if you have 3 characters, one with two portraits, one with one and one with three. The first portrait is always the default.
0
How do I do it?
To clarify, I'm talking about speakers used in conversation data. It's not directly pulling from a list of portraits, and I can't seem to locate a list of speakers anywhere after searching for over an hour. It's totally roadblocked me, and I'm curious if anyone knows how?
Edit: Ended up answering my own question when I wasn't looking for it: The game looks to any "Character" conversation state items for speaker information.
Edit2: Still foggy on where Characters are linked to portrait models and variations.... If anyone knows, I appreciate it! If I figure it out, I will go ahead and edit in here.
0
A quick development update, I largely took the weekend and the fourth off from working on the project, but I'm now back at it. You can expect beta version 1.3 of Wastelands to be up soon, I'm also aiming to have some polish features added to Backwater Station by the end of this week, with the major update coming next week. And now, time for another Easter egg hint for intrepid players!
Easter Egg Hint #2
It's not in a place you can go, you can't touch it, but you can see it. So check high and check low.
0
@AlexO6: Go
Excellent suggestion for the achievement, I guarantee that will be one of the three. Bunkers will be introduced in earnest in the next level, where they will be a necessary tool to survive. (There's already some great ways to defend your primary base from the red zerg should you choose to tackle the bonus objective! And the primary Zerg threat isn't a huge issue because you can push forward and capture the much more easily defensible station early on. There will be prods in the final version of the level to keep players from waiting too long to do so also.)
The resource pick-ups were hastily placed, so your feedback is appreciated, I noticed this also watching someone playthrough, given their location they're relatively insignificant by the time someone picks them up. I may boost some of them to give more resources, and place a few more. I was planning to add a truck on the road, I must have forgotten, so thanks for the reminder. :)
As for tech labs vs academies. Yes, I've made the decision to keep some of the SC2 tech the same. What is kept the same and what isn't is still under some deliberation, but suffice to say at the very least, the tech lab will be replacing the academy. A lot of what will be kept are things that are not in conflict with the canon, just things that help to further differentiate the play styles of each race. (Creep spread, addons and lowerable supply depots, warping units in, etc.) The goal is for the campaign to feel like StarCraft 1, while still managing to retain some of the functionality that we love in SC2.
0
@AlexO6: Go
Hey Alex, lots of great feedback in there! Yeah there are some polish issues that are not quite ironed out yet. I think I forgot to put this in the known caveat, but none of the tip or tutorial content is in yet. I really put that on the back burner because it's irrelevant to being able to play test the level. They'll be in, in the next major update to the level.
Regarding the Nomad... Is there solid canon that says the Nomad didn't exist 4 years before SC2? From what I understand it was used in harsh conditions, so it seemed appropriate near the dust bowl. It's used as a junker in SC2 during the mercenary level, I figured anything used as a junker is not new tech. From our perspective it was new in SC2, but lore wise I'm not sure that is the case? A lot of units are new, but anyways, I couldn't find a crashed drop ship or anything, and the landing pad felt absolutely naked without anything on it. I can put generic debris there though if you can point me to the canon about the Nomad. The outhouse is also a good call, I wasn't sure what to put there, and they needed something else, I just figured instead of having to have them open that giant gate they might have an outhouse for quick restroom breaks from guard duty. Maybe I'll put something else there though.
The door issue was fixed in the minor patch, unfortunately it sometimes takes long periods of time for a file to be confirmed, so, sorry about that! It had some other hotfixes also. Weird about the animal skull, I'll fix or remove it. The cliffside path was intentional, if you near the destructible rocks at orange's back door, the firebat will mention you can just continue along the path and avoid the hive entirely. It's the safest, quickest option, destroying the base is unnecessary, and I wanted to keep it that way, but am open to feedback.
Regarding the issue of familiarity with the Zerg! First off, good catch! You're right, this was something I was actually aware of, but to be clear, they did start referring to them as Zerg by this point. Though the UI in some cases called them xenomorphs, the actual characters only referred to them as such in the demo campaign. In the Terran campaign they called them Zerg. I was wary of the use of "Hive cluster" and originally having wrote that scratched it out and referred to it as merely a "hive" also at one point the Adjutant refers to it as a "nest" so I wanted to make it ambiguous, in that they are really not sure what to call it. I also made sure when he called it a hive, that the firebat hesitated, the line is....
SCLAoF02Firebat00023 Firebat We haven't heard back, and it doesn't look good. Seems the zerg have set up some sort of... hive nearby.
At some point they had to start calling them hives, but if this feels unnatural for some people, it's probably too early, I was on the fence about it. I may adjust the line to merely say nest as well.
As far as the hidden resources go, you're right to assume that those are not the Easter eggs. The gas inside the large skeleton, well, where does vespene gas come from? I have no idea honestly, I suppose I should've looked into that, but I assumed it may have been a natural gas of some kind, so putting it near some fossils, ah I was just trying to put a natural gas item somewhere that would make sense (lol.) Was it really odd for you? As far as them all being off the beaten path, yeah that's intentional, they're just little rewards for the player going off the beaten path and exploring. They don't do much, but it's a consolation prize. Nothing worse than leaving your players room to explore and giving them nothing for doing so. (There will very likely be an achievement for collecting all of them, or something in that vein.)
As far as bunkers go, the reason I wanted to avoid using them is that they are a major part of the gameplay in Mission 03 "Desperate Alliances," which is, if you happen to remember from SC1, a holdout mission. This is something I'm still debating on myself, whether or not to allow bunkers, they're not allowed in the original game during this mission, but the Zerg also do not attack. (You do actually, rescue bunkers at Backwater though.) The mission is very easy even without constructing bunkers on casual and normal, and on hard and brutal, not being able to construct bunkers makes the mission more challenging. There is something inherently awkward about letting the player rescue bunkers and not build them though... I will see how everyone feels about this, and consider adding bunkers back in!
Last but not least, the Easter egg! I'm glad that you took some time to look for it, sorry you didn't find it! Keep looking everyone! I wasn't planning to give out a hint this early, but it's only fair as it's a rather difficult one to find.
Easter Egg Hint #1
It's not underneath creep! With this in mind, you now know you won't need to kill any Zerg bases to find it.