Log 1
Hi guys
Now that I'm over the downheartness caused by my failure to reach the top 10 in the RTC contest with "Losing Memories", and my little editor vacation has ended; I'll return to spend my free time on my campaign.
I've decided to keep a log of what I'm doing and thinking while developing it. I believe that this will help me to stay focused and motivated, and it might be useful for those who are working on similar projects, to get ideas and learn from my mistakes. I'm also hoping to draw the attention of someone interested in helping me with the crafting.
My original plan is to bump this post once every one or two weeks, starting right now.
I'll begin writing about the campaign itself. The ultimate goal for it is to create a reboot of SC2, taking the best of SC1 (the immersive storytelling) and SC2 (the gameplay and the mechanic variation between missions).
I'm aware that it's too pretentious. That's why I've started with a single mission (Bottleneck, here's the link of its testing thread) to see where it goes. Now that I'm a little more confident, I'm focusing on the first 4 maps with their banking and linking.
If that's too much work, I'll decide to stop when they're done. If not, I'll continue with other episodes, periodically reevaluating if continuing is worth it or not.
What do I have so far?
- Lots of loose ideas,
- a basic structure of the story (a ~6000 words script),
- a functional map and two more in early stage of development,
- an early mod with several useful functions,
- a task list programmed until the end of june, and
- Finally, after more than half a year without finding one, a campaign name to replace the placeholder "SC2Bis": "Starcraft: Episodes from Brood War II" (the one you see in the title). I've made the banner you're seeing at the top and an icon for the launcher too:
How do I want this to work?
The player will play an active role as a character of the campaign. He will be a young Dominion Lieutenant in the Terran episodes, a Brood Queen in the Zerg episodes, and Artanis or Zeratul in the Protoss episodes.
There will be small RPG sections between missions, where the story will develop, and a SC1 style briefing before the start of each mission. I hope to come up with fresh mechanics for most of them.
Where am I going to start?
Now that I'm focusing back on this after the RTC contest, I would like to apply some things I've learned recently in the campaign mod. Specifically, I'll focus on two:
An achievement system: I was handling achievements in a very archaic way, I'll switch to user types. They're way more efficient.
A budget system: Several achievements will unlock techs. After every mission, there will be an amount of credits as reward. If the tech wasn't unlocked via achievements, it will be available to be purchased in the RPG sections.
There will be hidden techs too. For example, the secret of the first mission will unlock warpigs.
Once finishing with those, I'll continue with the introductory map, which is supposed to set the mood before the campaign starts.
Well, that's all. I hope I didn't bore you... Next logs should come with more eye candy.
1
A Spawn behavior is what creates the larvae. I should have been more clear; you have to create a new larva unit and create a new Train ability and add it to the new larva unit. Then set the unit created in the Spawn behavior to this new larva unit. Then replace the Hatchery - Spawn Larvae behavior on your new Hatchery with this new behavior.
Actors are just visuals applied to effects/behaviors/etc. They don't change the function of the unit. The Larva Release launch missile effect is just for when the Queen adds larvae to the Hatchery.
1
Sounds like you'd want to have a look at the Larva - Morph Unit (Larva -> Basic) ability of the larva to see how it's done and create a new one so you can morph different units from it.
1
Instead of an empty set effect, create a damage effect and have a switch effect run the damage effect if the unit has the explosive behavior using a validator.
From there, just have the explosion actor get created as a result of the damage effect. No need for an actor event with a term.