I'll take a look at the sample you provided. Thanks for the other insight you shared, as well. If anyone could share any additional advice, especially regarding question 2, I'd be much obliged.
A couple more questions.
Question 4 - I specifically want to implement a master archive that would allow players to play any mission at any time, so long as they had actually completed that mission. This would require that I keep their bank saved even after they complete the campaign. Is there a way to 'lock out' the master archive until the campaign has been completed? I imagine this would be as simple as storing a boolean (if custom variable 'campaign completed' equal to false, then you can't access the master archive), but I'm not sure.
Question 5 - Can one campaign have multiple banks active at a time? For example, if I want the masters archive autosaves to be tied to a different bank than the main campaign autosaves, is this possible? Would this even be necessary?
I have a few questions regarding the creation, use, and functionality of banks, and I'd appreciate anyone who could help!
Question 1 - Is there a 'most optimal' or 'most efficient' manner of implementation when it comes to banks and bank sections, e.g. a preferred method of saving/loading data from a bank and using it in a trigger?
Question 2 - How complicated would it be to create a master archives, such as the ones that are used in Blizzard's campaigns? If there are bank-dependent assets (credits, mercenaries, etc.) that a player may or may not have collected throughout their run, does that complicate the implementation of this feature?
Question 3 - Are banks related to auto-save systems at all, and can they be tied to save files? How are auto-saves set up in custom campaigns?
If I have additional questions regarding banks I will edit this post or write a new one. Thanks again in advance for the assistance!
Does anyone know how to access the Nova Covert Ops campaign maps? I can't find them anywhere in the editor, and I'm trying to analyse the terrain and triggers. Thanks in advance.
There's a bug where transmissions from Mal'ash and the Science Vessel portrait will overlap with other transmissions, e.g. if my hybrid are fighting the marines above the first Mal'ash beacon and I send 1115 to that beacon, both dialogue events occur at the same time, making it impossible to read what is actually going on.
If SC2 is anything like WC3 (and I know it is since it's practically the same engine), you can treat a unit as a variable and reference that variable for other triggers. So if the player built a Marauder from a Barracks, and you wanted that Marauder to be the one to rescue the units, then the trigger would look something like 'Unit is trained; Unit type = Marauder - Create variable with value [last created unit]' and you would reference that variable in the rescue trigger instead of 'any unit'. Just a hypothesis, though, since I haven't done much with SC2.
If nothing else, Legacy of Avoid this game at all costs really shows us all you can accomplish when you decide to retcon everything that happened beforehand and completely eschew the limitations of your setting by making a completely different game at all! Don't want to be pidgeonholed into making a Protoss campaign? Or is the label 'StarCraft expansion' getting you down? Just follow in Blizzard's footsteps and erase or misrepresent everything that made every race what they were (humans aside, those casuals have got to 'connect' with your story somehow) and then appropriate the lore of other games! Mass Effect's Thresher Maw becomes the VOID THRASHER! Warhammer 40,000's Dreadnought becomes FENIX(D)! And if you ever need a big bad end-of-the-universe enemy, ask Metzen to throw a couple dicks at a dartboard with generic, contrived idiocy like 'Dark', 'Void', 'Shadow', 'Essence', 'Ancient', etc. as labels and see what sticks! Ah, I see you've wound up with Dark Voice! Excellent choice! I would recommend picking some obscure, non-English moniker for him (let's be honest, feminism has no place in big bad guy land, which I also see you've tactfully named the 'Void' - bonus points for making it nebulous and without explanation). May I suggest the Sindarin word for 'doom'? Don't know what Sindarin is? Good, you're on the right path! Have fun!
This is literally the worst game I have ever played and I haven't even finished it yet. Damn, daddy.
I also third the idea that it may be best to ask the campaign creators before using them as examples.
I'll eighty-six my plans to do TAC in that case, especially since patch 3.0 appears to have bugged out a lot of the changes. Or maybe I'm just incompetent.
Again feel free to use any of my stuff. [...] In fact it may be interesting to see your take on the Marauders campaign which is far from serious but very cool.
I appreciate your volunteership. I'll check out Marauders in a few hours and see if I can construct a video from it.
I've never played Stukov and Pals, I was assuming it was comedic due to the title. My comment on 'hilarious bug-riddled disasters' wasn't relevant to that project either. Sometimes, purposefully putting bugs into your project is actually funny. I've done that countless times, as either comedy or satire.
You are deluding yourself to believe that you are being objective. Your analysis is deeply rooted in your personal prejudices, and your commentary and delivery carry those prejudices. If you want to provide feedback that is valuable to others, than you will need to moderate this approach.
You are making sweeping statements about things that require more evidence than what you've offered to prove. Where have I shown that I have personal prejudices when making objective statements? You later mention that you're 'probably done arguing about it', so I understand if you are unwilling to continue this discussion, but it feels odd to me that you'd make such statements without backing them up with examples and analysis of your own.
I accept that you would like to receive feedback in the manner that you offer it. I also accept that you genuinely wish people to grow. However, as someone who manages projects and developers for a living, I assure you that it is "objectively" wrong to do so. You fall into the trap that many people do of an idealized, purely rational vision of others. By ignoring the nuance and the realities of the nuances required for interactions with others, you instead alienate them.
I'm not dealing in analysing individuals. I'm analysing their body of work. There are plenty of poor character traits in every human being. Odds are, your favourite custom campaigner, music artist, movie director, etc. have insane religious beliefs, bigoted outlooks, or some other trait that would change the way you viewed them. Separating art from artist is a big part of what I do here, and it's made a lot easier by the fact that I know almost nobody on this forum. Outsider and yourself are the only ones I have any past conduct with, as the rest abandoned SC2 for greener pastures long ago.
If you want to elevate the craft of mapping, there's also an alternative to your criticism series. Why not build something and then do a series explaining your choices? If you can do that without denigrating others, then I guarantee we'd all find it much more interesting than this. It doesn't have to be big—just make something. I don't say this to in a "well, let's see you do better" manner—I honestly think it's a better approach for you.
I am considering a developer series on a serious project that I'm producing in the future, but I've never stopped creating custom content. I have been working on a single mission that I might release in the near future, but time will tell, I suppose. I tend to sit on developer materials until the project in question is completely released.
But, hey, you do you and I'll do me. I'm probably done arguing about it.
That's fine. Thanks for contributing to the discussion at any rate. I hope you'll find the next installment useful, since I know you're producing a brand new version of TAC instead of porting a previously-created one. Cheers.
In my opinion constructive criticism can always be good, key word being constructive, which I think this is. It isn't just 'it sucks' or anything like that. Personally I find it can hurt initially, and usually I have to sleep on it before looking at it objectively.
As a storied mapmaker I can easily separate criticism of my own project with criticism of me as an individual. I think that constructive criticism often gets conflated with personal attacks, and developers are very easily put into a defencive attitude rather than looking past their initial gut feeling (maybe they just need to sleep on it? haha) and trying to use criticism to improve their project.
You will always be biased. You will always lack the credentials to truly review your project. A second set of eyes is always necessary, and sometimes even that's not enough.
And I don't completely agree with that. There can be beauty in flaws. Like the ballooning death animation of a duplicated goliath that makes me chuckle in Stukov and Pals, haha.
Assuming Stukov and Pals is actually a comedic project, the term 'flaw' can apply differently there. Most campaigns are meant to be taken seriously so I structured my discussion and vernacular for the purpose of analysing serious projects.
With that said, all flaws that can be fixed should be, so the end product reflects the developer's vision of the project as closely as possible. Whether that vision is a hilarious bug-riddled disaster or a technical marvel with all the bells and whistles is up to the developer in question.
Frankly though, this community does not need a critical eye like this (at least not currently). Content quality is not improved by tearing apart what we have! We need to be cultivating excitement and attention, which incentivizes folks to improve and keep trying new things.
It seems that maybe I missed the mark when it comes to being objective and making sure that peoples' feelings were respected. At the very least, it is apparent that a lot of people got the wrong idea from my video. The reason I spend so much time early on explaining that I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence and that I'm going to great lengths to avoid my more common form of commentary so nobody feels attacked is precisely to avoid this kind of response - where individuals feel that a project is being 'torn apart'. In fact, I'm actually trying to accomplish the last sentence of the above quote, because I both want to see the community grow in both popularity and overall quality. I'm doing my best to keep things objective but I have no problem admitting that it is in fact a very new style for me, as I'm more used to offering misgivings and praise as soon as I see something deserving of either. Your point about whether or not the community 'needs' a critical eye in this manner is something that will likely be decided by simple turnout ('voting with your view', in a way), as it seems that plenty of people are genuinely interested in the future of this series and what it offers. Ultimately it seems that some manner in which I've presented the video's function - which is not to review an individual project but to use reference material to make a larger, objective, educational point about design in order to help others produce better-quality content - has caused almost everyone, including Jay, to miss the point. I'll be looking to make the next video far more concise in terms of its premise and its goals to avoid this kind of response in the future, though I don't know how much clearer I can make it from my perspective. Maybe someone here has a suggestion?
It may seem like I'm sometimes oblivious to design flaws, but the reality is that I know what my role is
Don't get me wrong, I know what your role is, too. And for your function to be realised you need to have a lower set of standards (or at least lead with that mindset), or you won't be able to generate the required hype and you'll ultimately fail to achieve the result you sought in the first place. I didn't mean anything negative when I said that you had lower standards because that's exactly what you need - I was just calling to attention a difference in our methods (or our philosophies, if you will).
I've seen it plenty of times - a new mapmaker creates something and it's buggy and not well put together. Telling them why everything sucks will not keep them going and this community is not big enough to risk forcing new folks away by being overly critical, even if the intent is to help them improve. I've seen huge improvements simply because people stick with it and make a second map.
On some level I recognise what you're trying to say here, in that giving a mapmaker a laundry list of faults will not necessarily help them, as you say, stick with the community. This is why I selected a popular, complete project by an individual who seems very dedicated and unlikely to leave to begin this video series. I wanted to avoid just that response from the campaign creator. However, that being said, every producer here should want to have a list of their project's objective faults. That's not even really the purpose of this series, but I believe this wholeheartedly. If you aren't aware of a flaw, how can you fix it? You can't. And you should want to fix every flaw. That doesn't mean you will, because some flaws are much harder to fix than others; for example, the pathing system in Brood War would require recoding the assembly of the .exe from the ground up and then rewriting all AI orders in the extremely-antiquated scripting language that Blizzard hardcoded in, so obviously this would almost never be attempted despite it being a flaw in every project by virtue of them being made in the BW engine.
Nope! As mentioned above, your let's play series' function is simply different than that of this video series, and that's fine with me. I specifically designed these to be educational and thorough. Yours are more off-the-cuff hype-generating reactions, because you want to generate excitement through acceptance and through drawing attention to custom content. That's absolutely fine, but people should know that our goals are pretty much the same - our methods are all that differ, and that's simply because the manner in which you accomplish your goal is very different than mine. Which, again, is absolutely fine, given the fact that different people will always be different.
Further, many mapmakers are simply stronger in some aspects over others and there's noting wrong with being accepting of that if the campaign is still fun to play. You seem to stick to the tenant that a map is not fun unless it is strong in every category. This is fine as a personal standard you hold for what you like to play, but is certainly not applicable to most players.
Once again (and responses like these are why I feel I must have failed at elucidating the function/purpose of this series), I do not aim to provide a proper review, subjective or objective, of any project featured in this series. The purpose of these videos are to use a reference material (in this case Vortex of the Void) to explain larger educational points, e.g. the 'Show, Don't Tell' discussion I attempted to start very early on. While the discussions I attempt to have will deal with objective quality of the projects showcased in the videos, I purposefully do not run through the entire project simply because I am avoiding offering a complete review. We aren't so much discussing the overall quality of a project in every facet, but rather using it to focus our perspectives on information that we can use to learn new things. My personal, subjective standards don't matter in this instance because they are not what I am attempting to offer in these videos. I'll make a greater effort to minimise any point in which I mention my personal standards so this kind of confusion is avoided in the future.
Additionally, the series is designed in such a way that some problems with balancing ('this ability/hero/unit is too effective') and story ('this seems like a plot hole') could very well have been resolved by the time the campaign ends, but because we were able to experience them in a proverbial microcosm, we can learn from them - and so if we ever do play a project start-to-finish, we can identify whether or not a project resolved issues that cropped up in the earlier maps. Identifying potential or confirmed flaws is a huge part of any project's improvement process, so teaching this kind of philosophy is actually very key and was the reason I focused only on the early maps of Vortex of the Void.
If a producer wishes for their project to be reviewed piece by piece, they can contact me personally, and I can construct a more complex video surrounding that premise (which would likely not be released publicly), but that's not what I'm aiming for with this video series.
I think your style is something a much larger community could definitely benefit from. Our size here is too small and on the verge of collapsing if too much negativity and nitpicking gets thrown around. Don't take my comment as a personal attack on you - I'm just genuinely concerned that this specific style of critique can break the spritis of content creators. Everyone here just wants to help grow the scene and improve the content quality so I think we should all appreciate what your intent is!
With respect and understanding to what you are saying here, I think that any community of any size can benefit from this kind of educational developer content and believe that, upon watching the second or third installment, any concerns people originally had will be resolved on the basis that the purpose of the video series will become very clear. I'm glad I was able to pinpoint some of the flaws with my original approach so I can produce higher-quality educational content, so I will be taking all of this into account when I select and record a run through my next reference materials. Thanks very much for your attention to the topic, and I'll do my best to allay all of your concerns in the coming weeks!
I appreciate that you would like to help, but as Jay said, you are not doing so currently.
A toxic community is a massive bar to creativity. Helping someone does not require tearing them down—in fact, if you are derogatory, it's very likely that whatever you see will be ignored.
I would hope that it didn't come across that the multitude of my video was derogatory. I am normalised to such an approach, as this is completely new territory to me, so I will promise that this specific concern will not be a problem when I drop the second video in the series, and do apologise if it felt like I was being unfair or subjective in my less constructed, more off-the-cuff analysis in this video.
Be humble. You are one person. No matter how smart you are, you should approach others as if they too are experts. You never have the right to speak down to someone.
I am more than willing to admit that I am one person, but I take issue with treating everyone as experts. Most people are not, and are far from it. That is actually more exciting anyways, as it means that people who are new to the tools, the lore, or maybe even the game overall are attempting to get into custom content production. These newer individuals are likely to be impressionable, however, and playing any official Blizzard campaign can give you a very skewed standard that you may never let go of if it is never challenged. I have produced custom content for a decade. I have voice acted for over half that time. I have done every part of a 'high-end' custom content release - scriptwriting, voice acting, graphic and sound design, music production, mapmaking, modding, characterisation, the list goes on. I have useful experience in these fields and I am trying to give back to the community that allowed me to develop this set of skills.
Now, if the community themselves are overwhelmingly in favour of me cancelling the series, I will pull it from mapster in order to respect their wishes. Whether or not I continue it on my own is another story, as it is my decision in the end, but I would certainly not want to continue offering content to a community that doesn't want it, and I recognise that such a response could potentially happen even after the second or third episode is released. I am very excited to give back to the community that I've been a part of for over ten years and I hope that I can help at least one person with this video series, but if I can't, I'll accept that and move on.
Lead with praise. ALWAYS start with the things you like.
Be selective. There are things that aren't possible and things that just aren't worth the time to do. Figure out what should really be acted upon, and don't swamp someone with nitpicks.
I actually do agree with the idea of leading with praise in a situation like this, given the stability (or perhaps lack thereof) of the current community. However, citing a point I made to Jay earlier, the identification of any and all potential objective flaws is a massive boon of a skill to have for anyone in any production position, whether it relates to StarCraft or not. Even if things cannot truly be fixed, such as the pathing AI in Brood War (or SC2, for that matter, as it performs very poorly), it is still important to recognise those flaws with your engine or your project so you can work around them if you cannot fix them. An example of this would be to avoid putting too many small corridors in a Brood War campaign to or placing additional ramps (or larger ramps, if the extended terrain is there) to minimise the amount of pathing errors. We can't fix that issue, but we can design our maps intelligently so that the impact of that issue is not nearly as high as it would be otherwise. Awareness of these issues does matter!
Eliminate value and qualitative judgments from your vocabulary—scratch "bad," "crap," "ugly," "boring," etc.
Speak in terms of only your experience—"I would like to see more rocks here," "I beat the attack waves very easily," etc.
Ask questions. "How did you pick these attacks?" "What would you think about XXX?"
Objective statements (which is what this series is built around) require good and bad as barometers of objective quality, so your first point is rendered moot simply by the purpose of these videos - I need some of those words to make objective statements that don't deal in subjectivity or opinions, and I don't need the others because I'm avoiding subjectivity entirely and focusing on educating the community and its developers. As far as experience goes, I can in fact say that I have experience with most facets of a custom campaign, as I elucidated to earlier, so my identification of potential or confirmed flaws should not come as a problem to anyone as I can back up what I am saying (which I do every single time, or at least attempt to). This should furthermore not be a problem due to the fact that the identification of issues and flaws is so key. Asking questions is a good tool in some cases for education but I feel that, overall, your points don't necessarily match up to the function of this series due to the fact that they are meant for subjective feedback of a campaign and I'm offering objective analysis to make a point - the reference material really is just reference material. It's to help us learn.
I have not seen any of your content. I will watch it once it becomes more positive. Here are some ideas on how to make it so:
Highlight what is fun. Ignore the bad parts. Mapper already knows about them. Perhaps mapper does not share your vision? Who is the owner of the vision? The maker of the game.
Suppress all criticism. If you have nothing nice to say - stay silent. No stars, no down votes.
Report obvious bugs Be detailed, to the point and unemotional. Attach screenshots. No screenshots -> skip filing the bug.
Suppress all "cool ideas" and feature requests. Those will derail the mapper from the core vision. It might also make mapper feel inadequate. By highlighting the fun and beautiful, mapper will focus on that.
I feel like most of your concerns here are moot because of the nature of this series. It is designed to be objective, to provide educational analysis. Your commentary here assumes I am reviewing the project in a subjective manner, which is in many ways the antithesis of what I am attempting to do. The function of these videos has nothing in common with a subjective, personal review. It has as little bias as possible. It revolves around the objective, the factual. Stymieing the chance at teaching valuable skills through this series by attempting to dress up the project is precisely what I want to avoid. Distracting from the message of the video by assuring mapmakers that it's okay if there are objective flaws is not constructive - it's just reinforcing the idea that you shouldn't want to strive for high quality.
Culture products are not some form of bacteria that needs to evolve by exposure to anger and passive aggressive slurs. Culture products comes from humans. Somehow the SC2 fans and gamers in general (me included) seem to have a hard time understanding how humans work. We give and care when we feel loved and needed. We stop caring and give up when we feel unappreciated.
Not necessarily. Without getting into my past, there were very few times in my life where I felt loved and needed, and that has not negatively impacted my ability to create custom content or form educational analysis. Dressing everything up with positive reinforcement will only get you so far if the foundation for your design philosophies is flawed from the get-go. People shouldn't take an objective analysis of their project as a personal attack - it's as far from subjective as you can get, and it is designed with the intention of improving the objective quality, which should make people subjective excited.
Obviously, Pr0no, you are not the only one who has fallen for pleasures of sinking other peoples work of passion. [...] Somehow I felt entitled to sink their work. Why? It felt good, made me feel intelligent and important and I could take out some frustrations on something that I did not care about. Somehow I felt like I helped them. What I actually did was leech of their passion and used their produce as a mental toilet. Not very nice at all.
This is not something I'm doing so I can feel better about myself or so I can validate my intelligence, or whatever you're trying to get at with this statement. My importance doesn't figure into it. I'm simply a person with a set of skills and lots of experience. I'm someone who's started countless projects in the past, all of varying degrees of quality. I'm someone who cancelled countless projects, as well, and they were all abandoned for various reasons. I'm someone who can provide useful analytical insight to avoid these problems, and hopefully, teach the community to identify and correct as many flaws as possible to improve the overall quality of their project. It doesn't matter to me whether or not I am the one to do this. I'm only doing it because nobody else seems to have done it, and I figured I might as well try and help the community out.
I have written multiple insulting pieces about Blizzard, their developers and their games. Perhaps not in caps-lock, but certainly passive aggressive rants. Since Blizzard is a publicly traded company with a reputation; they can't go after individual fans like you and me when opinions are crossing red lines. I guess it should be fans defending them when it happens (like in the case of Starbow). Instead we do the opposite and we join the bully ranks. If the Starcraft franchise ever really "dies", the main culprit would be us fans who hated it to death. Why invest money and passion in something people do not like?
No, when StarCraft dies, it will be because of Blizzard's poor handling of the IP from both business and design perspectives. That's a fact. The production value of StarCraft has never been spectacular and always held some pretty massive failures when it came to objectively-graded assets (art, sound, etc.), but they have really hit new lows with SC2 and I don't think there's any way back for the IP as of right now. Even so, this is irrelevant to the discussion of the video series and its function, and I feel like you're trying to make a point that doesn't really pertain to this topic. If you want to talk more about this you're more than welcome to shoot me a PM or start your own discussion thread elsewhere, though, as perhaps what you're saying has some merit as a conversation or debate amongst the community.
Although I will say that one of your points is interesting from my perspective. 'Why invest money and passion in something people do not like?' I invest countless hours into projects that get very little exposure despite being a huge feedback junkie. I am constantly striving to improve, and player feedback is one of the best ways to do that. But if nobody ever plays a campaign that I produce, I will still feel accomplished in that I produced a campaign, because it's a personal passion of mine. I make campaigns because I want to play good campaigns, and (at least for Brood War) none yet exist. If only to have something to play later on, creating a campaign is worth it.
Most map makers (creative people in general) tend to work alone or in small teams. They expose their content to others for free or for some pretty small fee considering production costs. Mostly because it is fun to see someone enjoy your produce and get some attention. In return these people tend to get negative reviews, suggestions of improvements, feature requests, anger and frustrations over bugs. In the echo chamber of the lone mind they all implies: "Your work is not done, your are not working hard enough, why are you not doing more? Your work is full of flaws, not perfect, not acceptable, how dare you expose me to this: please stop doing that"
Again, I am not offering any of this besides perhaps suggestions to improve. It is one hundred percent your decision if you watch my videos. It is up to me to attempt to provide a compelling analysis in order to teach the community, but if they don't watch, they won't learn - and that's totally valid. They choose whether or not they want to watch the video series and explore the projects of their peers (or potentially their own). Once they click onto the video, however, the onus is on me to produce quality analysis and allow them to gain something from watching the video. The function has never been and will never be to be subjective in any way.
Stop making games is what I have done and many with me. Usually people mention work, studies and life in general as reasons. It does not change one of the sad truths about game development. Fans are one of the worst parts of the job. Only say positive things about others work of passion
There might be more grounds to this argument when subjective praise or complaints are being levied at a project, but as I've said countless times, that's not the function of this series. Hopefully, going forward, you can see that in the future installments.
Again, I appreciate everyone's continued interest in this topic and will be attempting to allay everyone's concerns in the next installment of the series. Thanks to everyone who has responded as your commentary does help me gauge where I succeeded and where I failed, which will help me to do more of the former and less of the latter as time goes on. Cheers!
0
I'll take a look at the sample you provided. Thanks for the other insight you shared, as well. If anyone could share any additional advice, especially regarding question 2, I'd be much obliged.
A couple more questions.
Question 4 - I specifically want to implement a master archive that would allow players to play any mission at any time, so long as they had actually completed that mission. This would require that I keep their bank saved even after they complete the campaign. Is there a way to 'lock out' the master archive until the campaign has been completed? I imagine this would be as simple as storing a boolean (if custom variable 'campaign completed' equal to false, then you can't access the master archive), but I'm not sure.
Question 5 - Can one campaign have multiple banks active at a time? For example, if I want the masters archive autosaves to be tied to a different bank than the main campaign autosaves, is this possible? Would this even be necessary?
0
I have a few questions regarding the creation, use, and functionality of banks, and I'd appreciate anyone who could help!
Question 1 - Is there a 'most optimal' or 'most efficient' manner of implementation when it comes to banks and bank sections, e.g. a preferred method of saving/loading data from a bank and using it in a trigger?
Question 2 - How complicated would it be to create a master archives, such as the ones that are used in Blizzard's campaigns? If there are bank-dependent assets (credits, mercenaries, etc.) that a player may or may not have collected throughout their run, does that complicate the implementation of this feature?
Question 3 - Are banks related to auto-save systems at all, and can they be tied to save files? How are auto-saves set up in custom campaigns?
If I have additional questions regarding banks I will edit this post or write a new one. Thanks again in advance for the assistance!
0
Why is this not true of the other campaigns? They cost more and are even bigger.
0
I pre-purchased all mission packs. I own them. Why am I not able to open them in the editor?
0
Does anyone know how to access the Nova Covert Ops campaign maps? I can't find them anywhere in the editor, and I'm trying to analyse the terrain and triggers. Thanks in advance.
0
I'd like to add you on skype to talk this over. Mine is Pr0nogo.
0
There's a bug where transmissions from Mal'ash and the Science Vessel portrait will overlap with other transmissions, e.g. if my hybrid are fighting the marines above the first Mal'ash beacon and I send 1115 to that beacon, both dialogue events occur at the same time, making it impossible to read what is actually going on.
0
PM me and I'll see what I can do.
0
If SC2 is anything like WC3 (and I know it is since it's practically the same engine), you can treat a unit as a variable and reference that variable for other triggers. So if the player built a Marauder from a Barracks, and you wanted that Marauder to be the one to rescue the units, then the trigger would look something like 'Unit is trained; Unit type = Marauder - Create variable with value [last created unit]' and you would reference that variable in the rescue trigger instead of 'any unit'. Just a hypothesis, though, since I haven't done much with SC2.
0
If nothing else, Legacy of Avoid this game at all costs really shows us all you can accomplish when you decide to retcon everything that happened beforehand and completely eschew the limitations of your setting by making a completely different game at all! Don't want to be pidgeonholed into making a Protoss campaign? Or is the label 'StarCraft expansion' getting you down? Just follow in Blizzard's footsteps and erase or misrepresent everything that made every race what they were (humans aside, those casuals have got to 'connect' with your story somehow) and then appropriate the lore of other games! Mass Effect's Thresher Maw becomes the VOID THRASHER! Warhammer 40,000's Dreadnought becomes FENIX(D)! And if you ever need a big bad end-of-the-universe enemy, ask Metzen to throw a couple dicks at a dartboard with generic, contrived idiocy like 'Dark', 'Void', 'Shadow', 'Essence', 'Ancient', etc. as labels and see what sticks! Ah, I see you've wound up with Dark Voice! Excellent choice! I would recommend picking some obscure, non-English moniker for him (let's be honest, feminism has no place in big bad guy land, which I also see you've tactfully named the 'Void' - bonus points for making it nebulous and without explanation). May I suggest the Sindarin word for 'doom'? Don't know what Sindarin is? Good, you're on the right path! Have fun!
This is literally the worst game I have ever played and I haven't even finished it yet. Damn, daddy.
0
I'll eighty-six my plans to do TAC in that case, especially since patch 3.0 appears to have bugged out a lot of the changes. Or maybe I'm just incompetent.
I appreciate your volunteership. I'll check out Marauders in a few hours and see if I can construct a video from it.
0
I've never played Stukov and Pals, I was assuming it was comedic due to the title. My comment on 'hilarious bug-riddled disasters' wasn't relevant to that project either. Sometimes, purposefully putting bugs into your project is actually funny. I've done that countless times, as either comedy or satire.
0
You are making sweeping statements about things that require more evidence than what you've offered to prove. Where have I shown that I have personal prejudices when making objective statements? You later mention that you're 'probably done arguing about it', so I understand if you are unwilling to continue this discussion, but it feels odd to me that you'd make such statements without backing them up with examples and analysis of your own.
I'm not dealing in analysing individuals. I'm analysing their body of work. There are plenty of poor character traits in every human being. Odds are, your favourite custom campaigner, music artist, movie director, etc. have insane religious beliefs, bigoted outlooks, or some other trait that would change the way you viewed them. Separating art from artist is a big part of what I do here, and it's made a lot easier by the fact that I know almost nobody on this forum. Outsider and yourself are the only ones I have any past conduct with, as the rest abandoned SC2 for greener pastures long ago.
I am considering a developer series on a serious project that I'm producing in the future, but I've never stopped creating custom content. I have been working on a single mission that I might release in the near future, but time will tell, I suppose. I tend to sit on developer materials until the project in question is completely released.
That's fine. Thanks for contributing to the discussion at any rate. I hope you'll find the next installment useful, since I know you're producing a brand new version of TAC instead of porting a previously-created one. Cheers.
0
As a storied mapmaker I can easily separate criticism of my own project with criticism of me as an individual. I think that constructive criticism often gets conflated with personal attacks, and developers are very easily put into a defencive attitude rather than looking past their initial gut feeling (maybe they just need to sleep on it? haha) and trying to use criticism to improve their project.
You will always be biased. You will always lack the credentials to truly review your project. A second set of eyes is always necessary, and sometimes even that's not enough.
Assuming Stukov and Pals is actually a comedic project, the term 'flaw' can apply differently there. Most campaigns are meant to be taken seriously so I structured my discussion and vernacular for the purpose of analysing serious projects.
With that said, all flaws that can be fixed should be, so the end product reflects the developer's vision of the project as closely as possible. Whether that vision is a hilarious bug-riddled disaster or a technical marvel with all the bells and whistles is up to the developer in question.
:^)
Doing that now.
0
It seems that maybe I missed the mark when it comes to being objective and making sure that peoples' feelings were respected. At the very least, it is apparent that a lot of people got the wrong idea from my video. The reason I spend so much time early on explaining that I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence and that I'm going to great lengths to avoid my more common form of commentary so nobody feels attacked is precisely to avoid this kind of response - where individuals feel that a project is being 'torn apart'. In fact, I'm actually trying to accomplish the last sentence of the above quote, because I both want to see the community grow in both popularity and overall quality. I'm doing my best to keep things objective but I have no problem admitting that it is in fact a very new style for me, as I'm more used to offering misgivings and praise as soon as I see something deserving of either. Your point about whether or not the community 'needs' a critical eye in this manner is something that will likely be decided by simple turnout ('voting with your view', in a way), as it seems that plenty of people are genuinely interested in the future of this series and what it offers. Ultimately it seems that some manner in which I've presented the video's function - which is not to review an individual project but to use reference material to make a larger, objective, educational point about design in order to help others produce better-quality content - has caused almost everyone, including Jay, to miss the point. I'll be looking to make the next video far more concise in terms of its premise and its goals to avoid this kind of response in the future, though I don't know how much clearer I can make it from my perspective. Maybe someone here has a suggestion?
Don't get me wrong, I know what your role is, too. And for your function to be realised you need to have a lower set of standards (or at least lead with that mindset), or you won't be able to generate the required hype and you'll ultimately fail to achieve the result you sought in the first place. I didn't mean anything negative when I said that you had lower standards because that's exactly what you need - I was just calling to attention a difference in our methods (or our philosophies, if you will).
On some level I recognise what you're trying to say here, in that giving a mapmaker a laundry list of faults will not necessarily help them, as you say, stick with the community. This is why I selected a popular, complete project by an individual who seems very dedicated and unlikely to leave to begin this video series. I wanted to avoid just that response from the campaign creator. However, that being said, every producer here should want to have a list of their project's objective faults. That's not even really the purpose of this series, but I believe this wholeheartedly. If you aren't aware of a flaw, how can you fix it? You can't. And you should want to fix every flaw. That doesn't mean you will, because some flaws are much harder to fix than others; for example, the pathing system in Brood War would require recoding the assembly of the .exe from the ground up and then rewriting all AI orders in the extremely-antiquated scripting language that Blizzard hardcoded in, so obviously this would almost never be attempted despite it being a flaw in every project by virtue of them being made in the BW engine.
Nope! As mentioned above, your let's play series' function is simply different than that of this video series, and that's fine with me. I specifically designed these to be educational and thorough. Yours are more off-the-cuff hype-generating reactions, because you want to generate excitement through acceptance and through drawing attention to custom content. That's absolutely fine, but people should know that our goals are pretty much the same - our methods are all that differ, and that's simply because the manner in which you accomplish your goal is very different than mine. Which, again, is absolutely fine, given the fact that different people will always be different.
Once again (and responses like these are why I feel I must have failed at elucidating the function/purpose of this series), I do not aim to provide a proper review, subjective or objective, of any project featured in this series. The purpose of these videos are to use a reference material (in this case Vortex of the Void) to explain larger educational points, e.g. the 'Show, Don't Tell' discussion I attempted to start very early on. While the discussions I attempt to have will deal with objective quality of the projects showcased in the videos, I purposefully do not run through the entire project simply because I am avoiding offering a complete review. We aren't so much discussing the overall quality of a project in every facet, but rather using it to focus our perspectives on information that we can use to learn new things. My personal, subjective standards don't matter in this instance because they are not what I am attempting to offer in these videos. I'll make a greater effort to minimise any point in which I mention my personal standards so this kind of confusion is avoided in the future.
Additionally, the series is designed in such a way that some problems with balancing ('this ability/hero/unit is too effective') and story ('this seems like a plot hole') could very well have been resolved by the time the campaign ends, but because we were able to experience them in a proverbial microcosm, we can learn from them - and so if we ever do play a project start-to-finish, we can identify whether or not a project resolved issues that cropped up in the earlier maps. Identifying potential or confirmed flaws is a huge part of any project's improvement process, so teaching this kind of philosophy is actually very key and was the reason I focused only on the early maps of Vortex of the Void.
If a producer wishes for their project to be reviewed piece by piece, they can contact me personally, and I can construct a more complex video surrounding that premise (which would likely not be released publicly), but that's not what I'm aiming for with this video series.
With respect and understanding to what you are saying here, I think that any community of any size can benefit from this kind of educational developer content and believe that, upon watching the second or third installment, any concerns people originally had will be resolved on the basis that the purpose of the video series will become very clear. I'm glad I was able to pinpoint some of the flaws with my original approach so I can produce higher-quality educational content, so I will be taking all of this into account when I select and record a run through my next reference materials. Thanks very much for your attention to the topic, and I'll do my best to allay all of your concerns in the coming weeks!
I would hope that it didn't come across that the multitude of my video was derogatory. I am normalised to such an approach, as this is completely new territory to me, so I will promise that this specific concern will not be a problem when I drop the second video in the series, and do apologise if it felt like I was being unfair or subjective in my less constructed, more off-the-cuff analysis in this video.
I am more than willing to admit that I am one person, but I take issue with treating everyone as experts. Most people are not, and are far from it. That is actually more exciting anyways, as it means that people who are new to the tools, the lore, or maybe even the game overall are attempting to get into custom content production. These newer individuals are likely to be impressionable, however, and playing any official Blizzard campaign can give you a very skewed standard that you may never let go of if it is never challenged. I have produced custom content for a decade. I have voice acted for over half that time. I have done every part of a 'high-end' custom content release - scriptwriting, voice acting, graphic and sound design, music production, mapmaking, modding, characterisation, the list goes on. I have useful experience in these fields and I am trying to give back to the community that allowed me to develop this set of skills.
Now, if the community themselves are overwhelmingly in favour of me cancelling the series, I will pull it from mapster in order to respect their wishes. Whether or not I continue it on my own is another story, as it is my decision in the end, but I would certainly not want to continue offering content to a community that doesn't want it, and I recognise that such a response could potentially happen even after the second or third episode is released. I am very excited to give back to the community that I've been a part of for over ten years and I hope that I can help at least one person with this video series, but if I can't, I'll accept that and move on.
I actually do agree with the idea of leading with praise in a situation like this, given the stability (or perhaps lack thereof) of the current community. However, citing a point I made to Jay earlier, the identification of any and all potential objective flaws is a massive boon of a skill to have for anyone in any production position, whether it relates to StarCraft or not. Even if things cannot truly be fixed, such as the pathing AI in Brood War (or SC2, for that matter, as it performs very poorly), it is still important to recognise those flaws with your engine or your project so you can work around them if you cannot fix them. An example of this would be to avoid putting too many small corridors in a Brood War campaign to or placing additional ramps (or larger ramps, if the extended terrain is there) to minimise the amount of pathing errors. We can't fix that issue, but we can design our maps intelligently so that the impact of that issue is not nearly as high as it would be otherwise. Awareness of these issues does matter!
Objective statements (which is what this series is built around) require good and bad as barometers of objective quality, so your first point is rendered moot simply by the purpose of these videos - I need some of those words to make objective statements that don't deal in subjectivity or opinions, and I don't need the others because I'm avoiding subjectivity entirely and focusing on educating the community and its developers. As far as experience goes, I can in fact say that I have experience with most facets of a custom campaign, as I elucidated to earlier, so my identification of potential or confirmed flaws should not come as a problem to anyone as I can back up what I am saying (which I do every single time, or at least attempt to). This should furthermore not be a problem due to the fact that the identification of issues and flaws is so key. Asking questions is a good tool in some cases for education but I feel that, overall, your points don't necessarily match up to the function of this series due to the fact that they are meant for subjective feedback of a campaign and I'm offering objective analysis to make a point - the reference material really is just reference material. It's to help us learn.
I feel like most of your concerns here are moot because of the nature of this series. It is designed to be objective, to provide educational analysis. Your commentary here assumes I am reviewing the project in a subjective manner, which is in many ways the antithesis of what I am attempting to do. The function of these videos has nothing in common with a subjective, personal review. It has as little bias as possible. It revolves around the objective, the factual. Stymieing the chance at teaching valuable skills through this series by attempting to dress up the project is precisely what I want to avoid. Distracting from the message of the video by assuring mapmakers that it's okay if there are objective flaws is not constructive - it's just reinforcing the idea that you shouldn't want to strive for high quality.
Not necessarily. Without getting into my past, there were very few times in my life where I felt loved and needed, and that has not negatively impacted my ability to create custom content or form educational analysis. Dressing everything up with positive reinforcement will only get you so far if the foundation for your design philosophies is flawed from the get-go. People shouldn't take an objective analysis of their project as a personal attack - it's as far from subjective as you can get, and it is designed with the intention of improving the objective quality, which should make people subjective excited.
This is not something I'm doing so I can feel better about myself or so I can validate my intelligence, or whatever you're trying to get at with this statement. My importance doesn't figure into it. I'm simply a person with a set of skills and lots of experience. I'm someone who's started countless projects in the past, all of varying degrees of quality. I'm someone who cancelled countless projects, as well, and they were all abandoned for various reasons. I'm someone who can provide useful analytical insight to avoid these problems, and hopefully, teach the community to identify and correct as many flaws as possible to improve the overall quality of their project. It doesn't matter to me whether or not I am the one to do this. I'm only doing it because nobody else seems to have done it, and I figured I might as well try and help the community out.
No, when StarCraft dies, it will be because of Blizzard's poor handling of the IP from both business and design perspectives. That's a fact. The production value of StarCraft has never been spectacular and always held some pretty massive failures when it came to objectively-graded assets (art, sound, etc.), but they have really hit new lows with SC2 and I don't think there's any way back for the IP as of right now. Even so, this is irrelevant to the discussion of the video series and its function, and I feel like you're trying to make a point that doesn't really pertain to this topic. If you want to talk more about this you're more than welcome to shoot me a PM or start your own discussion thread elsewhere, though, as perhaps what you're saying has some merit as a conversation or debate amongst the community.
Although I will say that one of your points is interesting from my perspective. 'Why invest money and passion in something people do not like?' I invest countless hours into projects that get very little exposure despite being a huge feedback junkie. I am constantly striving to improve, and player feedback is one of the best ways to do that. But if nobody ever plays a campaign that I produce, I will still feel accomplished in that I produced a campaign, because it's a personal passion of mine. I make campaigns because I want to play good campaigns, and (at least for Brood War) none yet exist. If only to have something to play later on, creating a campaign is worth it.
Again, I am not offering any of this besides perhaps suggestions to improve. It is one hundred percent your decision if you watch my videos. It is up to me to attempt to provide a compelling analysis in order to teach the community, but if they don't watch, they won't learn - and that's totally valid. They choose whether or not they want to watch the video series and explore the projects of their peers (or potentially their own). Once they click onto the video, however, the onus is on me to produce quality analysis and allow them to gain something from watching the video. The function has never been and will never be to be subjective in any way.
There might be more grounds to this argument when subjective praise or complaints are being levied at a project, but as I've said countless times, that's not the function of this series. Hopefully, going forward, you can see that in the future installments.
Again, I appreciate everyone's continued interest in this topic and will be attempting to allay everyone's concerns in the next installment of the series. Thanks to everyone who has responded as your commentary does help me gauge where I succeeded and where I failed, which will help me to do more of the former and less of the latter as time goes on. Cheers!