It shouldn't be 'truly random', but having a number of different maps or variations on a singular map (i.e. sometimes your expansion is farther away, sometimes the enemy bases are closer) and attaching the likelihood of those variations to other variations (i.e. your expansion is farther away more often when you are playing against zerg because they harass more) is a good way to cultivate more varied experiences.
What can you randomize besides enemy comps (and randomizing the units in comps).
Anything. These are supposed to be servants of a fucking deity. Make them have powerful units. Make it so that something sets them apart from the melee gameplay. Make them attack intelligently instead of arbitrarily spawning attack forces. Design an actual AI for them so that if the players have to cut through an enemy base to complete an objective, the AI actually defends itself instead of sitting there with all its preplaced units to make it harder for the players to progress in an artificial manner.
Make it so that if I harass the computers' resource gathering, it slows their attacks while they replace the harvesters.
Make it so that if I destroy certain tech structures, the AI doesn't get to use those units until they replace those structures (goes hand in hand with not artificially spawning them).
All of these grievances can additionally be extended to the campaign, where there can be 200 battlecruisers and thors on the right side of the AI's base, but they won't defend the left side of their base with them because that function hasn't been programmed into their script. There are user-made scripts that function better than Blizzard's own when it comes to performance (i.e. 1 million actions that clog up the pathfinding aren't present), strength, and variety. That should very rarely happen, and when it does, the solutions discovered by the users should be worked into the game by the developer and the developer should give the users credit for creating them. Instead, we get nothing.
For everyone who enters into this contest, buck the trend. Make a map that has truly-engaging gameplay with AI that feels like alive; have it defend itself when attacked, lose map control when its harvesting is disrupted, attack with less-terrifying forces when its tech structures are sniped, but will tear you a new one if you leave it unchecked. Incorporate spawning by attaching unit spawns to structures, so that the player has a recourse when they feel overwhelmed by the spawned forces and can interact with the game by destroying those production structures to stop their foes from creating more units, as opposed to having to wait out some timer for when the enemy AI is magically granted reinforcements via drop-pods. There is so much untapped depth and fun to be had that nobody is bothering to unearth, and the longer we as a community take to show people that Blizzard's way is boring and uninteractive (and therefore completely unfair at higher difficulties), the longer they'll receive credit where credit simply isn't due.
If you want them to improve as a company, you should criticize them whenever criticism is due. The co-op maps lack a lot of depth and don't even have many randomized elements that would increase replayability.
That's exciting. I'm willing to collaborate with people on this, either through voice acting/music, map design, or whatever else. I've always loved co-op campaigns.
I used to be able to do that without removing the gradual fade-in though. I've used that feature in the past for some jungle terrain and I never had any problems.
I'm trying to use the noise style brush to paint terrain textures selectively, but when I try, it completely fills the selective spots with the new textures instead of fading in gradually like it has in the past. Is there a setting or something that was reset recently? I've messed around with increments, speed, brush size, resolution, everything, but to no avail. Hope someone can help me out.
I don't mean to hijack the thread, but is it possible to change the texture for the deep canyon layer? I want to have that fog effect seen in the (third or fourth?) HotS mission where you're on a desert planet fighting the dominion, but can't seem to figure out how.
For readability I prefer when my units look distinctly different from other units. SC2 has a habit of making all visual cues blend into an incomprehensible mess, so I like that CybrosX has made the two Stalker units visually different.
My resolution begins this February. I'll be doing less brainless day-job work and making use of my marketable skills to pay my bills instead, all so I can open up my schedule and work on more campaigns. I'd also like to release at least one SC2 project this year, alongside the slew of Brood War projects I'm working on.
Going forward, I would also like to continue to offer high-quality voice acting, story consultation, and music composition services to members of the community. Compensation for these would be optional, as I'm mostly trying to expand my portfolio for my contracter profile. Just send me a PM if you need anything and we'll talk!
Ultimately, I'm just looking to be as happy as possible. I hope everyone had a good holiday season and I hope I see you all release the projects of your dreams this year!
Your opening cinematic reminded me of the old Halo machinimas I used to watch all the time when I was younger. Really detailed, good stuff. I like the look of the map design, too. Let me know if you need any testing or design help.
It's a shame you wanna walk away from it, though. I was going to propose we all work on a rewrite of the SC2 story. And I mean everyone...You, Gradius, Avex, Gna, CybrosX, and so on...
What would a rewrite of the SC2 story look like, in your (everyone's) eyes? Probably should have another topic, but I would actually prefer to just rewrite vanilla's story and start from scratch. Introduce the races individually with their infighting, much like the terrans'. Protoss introductory campaign starts out with the dark templar exodus (or aeon of strife), zerg introductory campaign starts out with them rebelling against the xel'naga and leaving Zerus (though I'd really like to just write the xel'naga out of direct interaction with the body of sc's canon), etc.
The assets look unique and feel cohesive in their design. Definitely a very different take on hybrid aesthetics than I've seen before.
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If you want them to improve as a company, you should criticize them whenever criticism is due. The co-op maps lack a lot of depth and don't even have many randomized elements that would increase replayability.
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It doesn't look like there's any rule against it, as long as the terrain and map design are yours and not taken from another map.
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That's exciting. I'm willing to collaborate with people on this, either through voice acting/music, map design, or whatever else. I've always loved co-op campaigns.
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I used to be able to do that without removing the gradual fade-in though. I've used that feature in the past for some jungle terrain and I never had any problems.
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Looks neat. I'm interested in seeing what you can accomplish with the custom race.
Let me know if you want me to voice act Stukov for you. I can do a decent impression.
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The latter is what I was referring to. Thanks for the help!
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I never would have found that. Thanks. Why the hell does that mess with this functionality?
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I'm trying to use the noise style brush to paint terrain textures selectively, but when I try, it completely fills the selective spots with the new textures instead of fading in gradually like it has in the past. Is there a setting or something that was reset recently? I've messed around with increments, speed, brush size, resolution, everything, but to no avail. Hope someone can help me out.
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I don't mean to hijack the thread, but is it possible to change the texture for the deep canyon layer? I want to have that fog effect seen in the (third or fourth?) HotS mission where you're on a desert planet fighting the dominion, but can't seem to figure out how.
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For readability I prefer when my units look distinctly different from other units. SC2 has a habit of making all visual cues blend into an incomprehensible mess, so I like that CybrosX has made the two Stalker units visually different.
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My resolution begins this February. I'll be doing less brainless day-job work and making use of my marketable skills to pay my bills instead, all so I can open up my schedule and work on more campaigns. I'd also like to release at least one SC2 project this year, alongside the slew of Brood War projects I'm working on.
Going forward, I would also like to continue to offer high-quality voice acting, story consultation, and music composition services to members of the community. Compensation for these would be optional, as I'm mostly trying to expand my portfolio for my contracter profile. Just send me a PM if you need anything and we'll talk!
Ultimately, I'm just looking to be as happy as possible. I hope everyone had a good holiday season and I hope I see you all release the projects of your dreams this year!
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Your opening cinematic reminded me of the old Halo machinimas I used to watch all the time when I was younger. Really detailed, good stuff. I like the look of the map design, too. Let me know if you need any testing or design help.
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I would definitely use this, since I aim to create classic-style campaigns.
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