With the public release of the first map pack consisting of Missions 01-05, an intermission map and a Campaign Launcher having happened last week on my Discord, the maps are now publicly available on SC2Mapster as well, with a few balance updates and minor changes.
This is a bit of an unusual post, but I've decided to upload a Word document containing all the scrapped ideas, notes and random trivia facts I have about Annihilation and its development phase. I've had this sitting on my computer for a while now, and figured I'd release it publicly to anyone who may be interested in this.
Good Stuff: - I enjoyed the terrain of this mission. I also have a thing for snow tilesets, so you get bonus points here. - Interesting concept of having different variants of the trooper. Always enjoy some good custom units. - I really like the little tidbits of lore with some of the units. Like how the Marauder is described as having more mobility with less health, and it’s also visually represented in the unit model. - Attack waves seemed well balanced. I liked how they became a decent challenge later on, sending both ultras and big groups of units. - Overall mission was pretty standard. A micro section followed by a destroy the enemy base mission. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing. I think it was a nice way to introduce the faction to the player. It’s highly customised, so you wouldn’t want players to be overwhelmed with an overly complex mission objective, so I appreciate that. - Speaking of the custom factions, I really enjoy the concept of it. Some really interesting ideas and unit models are used for it. The only downside of most of these unit models is that they don’t have their own construction animations, but that’s not a huge issue for me personally. Overall, I’m excited to see what other units are unlocked for this faction.
Suggestions: - Consider allowing players to skip cinematics. - Found some big doodads with no pathing, allowing my units to move through. Posted an image below so you can see where. - Would be interesting if the supply frame and resource panels weren’t visible during the initial micro section. Really no reason for it to be there until you get your base. - In the cutscene where Ezekiel arrives to your base, the background is all black, as in, the far clip of the camera is not very far. I’d suggest either moving down the camera a bit so you don’t see the blackness, or increasing the far clip (though, you may have reduced this yourself because of frame drops) - During the cutscene where Ezekiel arrives to your base, I could still see the green selection box for Clair and other units I had selected. I suggest storing the player’s currently selected units and deselect them all when the cinematic starts, then restoring their previously selected units when it ends. - You have access to the Workshop, yet you don’t actually use it for anything. I found that odd.

Bugs: - The new Marauder unit have their name displayed as “Unit/Name/Marauder2” - The Marauder’s attack animations seems bugged. Sometimes, he does not play his attack animation at all, and just stands still while shooting. Other times, he will shoot from one gun and the missile arrives from the other. - Ezekiel’s Defensive Drone lacks a description. It only displays the cooldown. Also, its name has [PH] at the start of it. Not sure if intended or not. - After the final cinematic faded out, nothing happened. I didn’t get the victory screen or anything. I was a bit confused.
Grammar & Typos: - Loading screen: “After the destruction of the entire planet Korhal” add an “of” before Korhal so it becomes “entire planet of Korhal” - Loading screen: “The Terran was the first to fall” Should be “The Terrans were the first to fall”. - Loading screen: “when the Lord in-between places emerge soon fell victims to anarchy.” Should be “when the Lord of in-between places emerged soon fell victim to anarchy”. - Loading screen: “The once left, are survivors,” once should be “ones”. - Loading screen: “The ones that remain is feral, wild beast.” should be “The ones that remain are feral, wild beasts”. - Loading screen: “The Lord in-between places began terraforming” similar to a previous mistake, you forget to put “of” after “Lord” so it becomes “Lord of in-between places”. - Intro cinematic: “You got to be kidding me.. Skulls..” should be “You’ve got” instead of “You got”. - Intro cinematic: “And now what? You’ll be going to kill me?” Should be either “You’ll be killing me?” or “You’re going to kill me?”. Your choice. - Intro cinematic: “Help me take down The skulls.” In this line, “The skulls” have The capitalised but not Skulls, yet in the other dialogue lines, it is the opposite; “the Skulls”. - Intro cinematic: “I’m not overjoyed to go up against the Skulls. Whats the catch.” Instead of punctuation after “What the catch” use a question mark. - Intro cinematic: “We are cut off from our path back to the colony by feral Zergs”. In this case, it’s just “Zerg” and not “Zergs”. - Intro cinematic: “There is an abandon “Skull” base just south of here.” abandon should be “abandoned”. Also, after “south of here” you forgot to put a punctuation mark. - Intro cinematic: “Yeah, we lost Bennet, besides that the rest is alive”. Yeah, we lost Bennet. End the sentence right there. Next part, “Besides that, the rest are alive”. - The abandoned base ping description says “Abandon base” instead of “Abandoned base”. - In Clair’s unit description, it says “Clair, has a powerful ranged attack” remove the comma after “Clair”. Also, in her unit description, after the “Can attack ground and air units” there is an additional empty line. You accidentally put another space in there. - Marauder description: “most of the suit of the originally Marauder was scraped” originally should be “original” and scraped should be “scrapped”. Also in the description, “Because of this, the marauder cannot take as much heat, but get lighter and faster instead.” marauder isn’t capitalised as “Marauder” and get should be “gets”. - Male Trooper description AND build description: “General-purpose infantry sacrifice movement speed for extra damage”. Change it so that it becomes “General-purpose infantry.” punctuation at the end. Also, sacrifice should be “Sacrifices” and remember to capitalise the S. - Hack the Abandoned Command Center Objective: Description says “Bring your forces there and hack it to gain control off it”. off should be “of.” - Midgame cinematic: “I never doubted for a second.” should be “I never doubted YOU for a second”. - Shelter description: “movement” should be “movement”. In addition, the Shelter’s description in the build menu does not have the extra yellow text as its unit description does. - Sandbag description: “Applys” should be “Applies”. This mistake is present both in the unit description AND the build menu description. - The description of the Weapon Racket in the build menu has a bunch of empty space at the bottom. The Weapon Racket’s unit description still uses the Engineering Bay description. - Ezekiel cinematic: “Exiting is it not?” Exiting should be “Exciting” and add a comma after it. - Hack for resources tooltip: “When this ability is active the hacker, hack for resources.” Should be, “When this ability is active, the hacker hacks for resources”. - Field Medic build description says “highjack” should be “hijack”. This is also the case for the Field Medic’s Hijack ability name, Meanwhile, its unit description is missing. - Female trooper build description: “increast” should be “increased”. - The build description for the Garage has a bunch of empty space, while its unit description uses the default Factory description. - Clear Zerg Base description. Should probably be “Clear Zerg Bases” since there’s multiple.
Other Notes: - In the intro cinematic when Clair “Cam” met the Skulls, she was facing away from them. You can prevent units from facing in directions they shouldn’t be using the trigger “Set Unit State” and turning the “Fidget” state Off. EDIT: In retrospect, she likes to constantly turn during all cutscenes. - Clair and Ezekiel’s static portraits does not match the animated ones. I posted a picture below so you can see. - Ezekiel still uses Swann’s default unit description. - Build Sandbags and Build Shelter uses the same hotkey. - Build Training Ground and Build Auto-Turret uses the same hotkey. - Hack for resources uses the same hotkey as “Hold Position”. - Should probably rename the “Trooper Female” to “Female Trooper” as that is more grammatically correct.
Good stuff: - Overall, this mission was fun, but there was quite a few glaring issues. And these are things like noticeable bugs that were not fixed, upper levels of the terrain that are very hard to defend due to limited space, and the fact that the difficulty spike is very steep. The first wave is very easy, but then the next few ones are incredibly hard if you didn’t find the Soul Reapers and knew they were coming. Then for a while, it becomes easy as you have plenty of very good protoss units to help you, until at the very end when the last few attacks suddenly again become insanely hard. So, just a bit of an issue with balancing. I’d recommend trying to rework the attacks somewhat, so that there is a more exponential difficulty curve, and it slowly gets harder and harder over time. That would create a much better mission flow. - Layout of the base was quite interesting. The cracks of terrain on the lower floor adds a cool effect. However, I do wanna say that maybe the size of the cracks should be decreased a bit. In the late-game, you have very little space to work with due to this. - I really like the look of the destroyed base. And the little details with one of the windows of the upper area having fallen down was a neat touch.
Suggestions: - In the intro cinematic, the text crawl that appears before we fade in to the last part with your base dissapears rather fast. Perhaps increase that by a couple of seconds. - You can build stuff on the bottom of the doodad ramps. This makes them raise a bit which looks very strange. Take a look at the image I posted. - Consider adding a sound effect for when the Protoss reinforcements arrive. - In the final cinematic, you slowly zoom towards the edge of the map. The background of korhal adds a nice sense of scale, but the zoom at the end ruins the illusion since you see where the cliffs end and the lava just stops. At this point, it becomes very clear that there is nothing beyond that point. Try to avoid showing the player the edges of the map like this. I showed the exact shot below. Consider showing a different area of the map or pan the camera upwards so you don’t see the cliffs and ruin the immersion. - Also, in the final cinematic, the drop ships that fly in fly through the giant tree in the background. I suggest either moving their spawn and move destination slightly to the side so they don’t move through the tree, or simply add a no fly zone around the tree so they go around it.
- Once again I can't skip cinematics.
Bugs: - Nathanial White’s portrait was all messed up in the cinematics. You could only see a bright background but not him. I’ve posted a picture below for reference. - There’s a bug with Medics and Firebats being built. Medic cost 150/100. This is because when trained, you get 2. The build ability is configured to make an additional Medic. As for the Firebats, they cost 200/50, and when trained, you get 2 of those as well. - When rescuing the Soul Reapers. the Tech lab on the barracks doesn’t change its color to blue and instead is red. Also, building a tech lab on the other barracks in that base also becomes red. - After rescuing the Soul Reapers’ the LZ ping remains. - Selendis warps in a group of the unused Aiur variant of the Void rays that do not have an attack, rendering them useless.
Typos: - Loading screen tip: You misspelled “Opportunity” and “their”. - Horner says “We have never met such an enemy… not the Protoss” “Not” should be capitalised. - In the intro, Marcellus says “sir” 3 times, and all times they are capitalised, even tho they shouldn’t be. In the last line, you also need to change the dialogue slightly so instead of saying “You just sight tight Sir and we will get you out of here in no time.” you change it to “You just sit tight, sir. We will get you out of here in no time.”
Other: - The loading screen did the same thing with the black borders as the previous mission. Mention again since I don’t know if it’s intended or not. - When looking at Nathanial’s dialogue in the Message log, his portrait appears as Artanis. - The two holes in the ground in the low area of the base where there’s lava in the low ground, but there’s some water tiles missing so there’s this big gap with no lava at all. Posted a picture below - An area of the terrain has textures that aren’t blended in very well. I took a picture below to showcase it. - When Selendis arrives, Valerian’s dialogue thanking them for coming triggers first. - Selendis sets up a base but never actually seem to build anything other than the Nexus and the other initial structures. The Probes don’t go to mine either.
Here you go. Hope it's helpful. I'll take a look at the 2 new missions you released a bit later.
Good stuff: - Overall, I quite enjoyed this mission. It didn’t really become much harder at any point during the mission though. And by the time I had gotten 2 of the 3 reinforcements, I could basically a-move through everything. I think you could easily add some additional of those powerful Shadow Spawns to spice things up. - The intro cinematic environment looked great. Good use of doodads! - The cave environment is awesome as well. We don’t see caves being used too often in SC2, and your take on it is pretty nice! Like the use of the actual mineable minerals and the doodad minerals. I like how there were also various different-looking areas to explore. Every part of the cave had something new for me to explore. - The Shadow Spawns were a really cool new unit and mechanic for the map. All the unique abilities was a nice touch and kept me on my toes.
One thing I did like is how there was multiple ways you could go, which helped sell the idea that this was a mine with many adjoining tunnels.
Suggestions: - I was unable to skip the cinematics. I’d recommend adding that so that people can replay the mission and not be forced to sit through them. - The supply frame is visible during the gameplay. Since supply is not a factor, I’d suggest removing it. Similarly, the Alliance menu is also visible. You can turn that off as well. - This is a very minor thing, but I would make the “actual” minerals that you’re using as doodads be unselectable, as well as removing their minimap icon so they don’t show up on the minimap. Do the same to the minerals and gas geyser further into the mission. It just adds a little more immersion, imo. You can remove the minimap icon through the “Send Actor Message” action. - When rescuing the additional troops behind rocks at the bottom of the map, consider ordering the extra units you get to move out of the big mine doodad. I didn’t notice I even got any units and was confused. I provided a screenshot below so you can see, I only spotted the units by looking at the minimap. The units from the other rock sites do move, so I think this is just an oversight on your part. - Consider adding a visual effect for Squad Sight when it’s active, similar to what the Havocs have. - There was a doodad in the mission that I noticed had no pathing. Ive posted the exact doodad and location in question as an image below. - The hotkey for Stimpack is the same as Target Lock, meaning you can’t manually use Target Lock if you want to. - One tip about terraining. Try to avoid making abrupt changes in textures, unless you’re doing manmade environments. In natural environments, everything should blend it a lot more. Generally, I found the texturing in this mention to be good, but there were some spots where the texture abruptly changes into a new one with no blend values. I posted a screenshot below indicating one such spot.
Bugs: - In the intro cinematic, Marcellus didn’t face Horner as they were talking. You can prevent units from turning during cinematics by using the “Set Unit State” and turning “Fidget” state off. - When the “Phantoms” tip popped up, its pop up text was “Shadow Spawns”
Typos: - Horner’s first line in the intro cinematic capitalizes “Of” in Sons of Korhal. Similarly, in the same line, he says “Good work with evacuating those civilians”. should remove “with” so it becomes simply “Good work evacuating those civilians.” - In Samuel’s line in the intro cinematic, there’s a period before a question mark after the word “abnormalities” - Marcellus’ last line in the cinematic. “They have however not reported back.” Should add a comma before and after however, so it looks like this: “They have, however, not reported back.” - In Marcellus’ unit description, “Of” in Sons of Korhal is capitalized. - In the Combat Veteran buff icon and command card icon, “Hero’s” is misspelled as “Heros”. - The Soul Reaper that introduces us to the bonus objective says “massage” instead of “message”. - Couple of mistakes in the objective description for the clearing the rocks. Firstly, it says “Big chunks of rock a” and it should be “Big chunks of rocks are” Later on, it says “Their s urvival”. You accidentally separated the s from the rest of the word here. - Marcellus says “What the hell are these things!!” when introduced to the Shadow Spawns. Instead of two exclamation points, make an exclamation point and a question mark, like this “!?” - Shadow Spawn tip: A couple mistakes here. First off, you say “Shadows” instead of “Shadow” in the description. In addition, “comes from the void” should be changed to “come from the void” as its plural. I would make one final change here. Instead of making “Spawned by an unknown force” a separate sentence, combine it with the last one, so it becomes “These “Shadow Spawns” come from the void, and are spawned by an unknown force.” - Crazed Miners tip: “Black oz is poring” should be “Black ooze is pouring”. - Phantoms tip: Instead of “make your forces fight between each other” I’d probably say “Force your units to fight each other”. - The Voidborns tip: A couple of typos here. “Lord in-between places” you need to add a “of” so its “Lord OF in-between places”. “Base of operations” is misspelled as “bas of operation”. Lastly, you use are instead of “is” at the end.
Other: - Unsure if this is intended or not, but the loading screen didn’t cover the entire screen, and had some thick black edges. Thought I’d mention it just in case. - I noticed when looking in the message log that Samuel’s static portrait is of the War Pig marine, and not the same as the animated version the Elite Guard’s have. I posted a couple images below so you can see the comparison. - When the game started, there was no music. Mentioning just in case, since I don’t know if that was the intention. It showed up when I moved a little further forward. - Shadow Spawns still use their default unit description. - Crazed Miners still use their default unit description. - There was one Shadow Spawn in the area by the bridge to the north of the base you pass by, that was Neutral to me. Unsure if bug or not. Provided a screenshot below. - Phantoms still use the Dark Archon unit description - The Secret Documents still use their default unit description mentioning Kerrigan. - The Phantoms never used Confusion on me. Mentioning this since I’m unsure if it’s bugged and not working or if I was just lucky. - Right before entering the final area at the top of the map to destroy the machine, there was this big hill made from elevated terrain height. It looked a bit off since you could move on top of it.
Apologies for the long abscence. I had intended to play the remaining 4 missions and give you some feedback, but I got busy along the way and eventually I forgot about it. I'll get the remaining missions as soon as I can!
It's actually funny you mention the lack of indication that you're about to miss your chance at completing the bonus objective on lower difficulties. I had intended to add a piece of dialogue to indicate that, but I forgot. Thanks for reminding me!
A War Story has just had its first public release. Act 01 Mission 01 is now available for download.
This is to be considered a demo of the campaign to get an idea of what the gameplay and story is like.
The remaining mission of Act 01 along with a potentially updated first mission will be released once the entire act is finished.
Until then, enjoy this taste of what's to come!
If you have any feedback pertaining to this first mission, please leave it here.
You can also join my Discord, where I post regular updates about my progress, and also post a variety of showcases. You can also leave your feedback there, if you have any. https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
Have to agree with Jayborino here. You are being very offensive, and presenting your feedback this way does not help the creator. Why not actually try to explain what made the mission so challenging and deliver some examples?
If I found a comment like this on one of my projects I'd just delete it and move on.
The campaign is going to be released in an Act-based system, meaning that all missions of Act 1 will be released at the same time when the entire Act is complete and have undergone balance testing.
Fun mission! The terrain really sold it as well. One thing I particularly loved was how you used those big bridges as walkable segments when rescuing the civilians. Looked really cool how it was all scaled up like that. For doodads, I’d be careful with placing those large korhal building doodads right next to the playable map area. While they help immerse the player into the world, they are very huge and will block your vision by quite a bit.
All the enemy units guarding the evacuation point where all tightly packed within that small area next to the beacon. I’d recommend placing a proper defence over there, and have the units being a little more spread out, instead of just putting a bunch of units on top of the point. Looks a little more natural that way, and it makes it easier for the enemy to retaliate as well, as they won’t get stuck on their own units. You can still make them send more troops, but at least make it so that all rallying units don’t just move to the same point and gather in one big group. With that being said, I also think there should be a limit. I didn’t move towards the evac point until like 10 minutes had passed, and in that time, they had gathered that huge group over there.
It felt a little weird that there was no markers or anything on the civilians. Would be helpful to have them appear on the map as either pings or have them be revealed. Furthermore, the ping that shows the location of the next arriving civilians is black, which makes it very hard to tell apart from the fog of war.
Bugs: - As soon as the map starts, I get that red flashy visual similar to when Marcellus gets attacked. It happened a few seconds later as well. Perhaps disable that during cinematics? - When I rescued the civilians at the bottom left corner of the map, nothing seemed to happen. Got no dialogue or anything confirming it, and the civilians were just standing there at the corner not doing anything. Look at the image I included to see what I mean.’ - Sometimes the civilians heading for the evac point bug out. Look at the second picture I posted, where 2 civilians are just standing close to the point. - During the final cinematic, while talking to the Inquisitor, Marcellus turned around, so he wasn’t facing him while they were talking. You can turn this off by disabling Turnable state on the unit. - In the initial shot of the cinematic, additional civilians were on the surface that just stood in a line. Those are the civilians that were on the way to the objective but stopped when I completed it. Would suggest removing them when the cinematic starts.
Typos: - The behaviour icon and passive icon on the command card for Combat Veteran Buff it says “Heros” instead of “Heroes”. - When Horner’s first dialogue he misspells his own name as “Horne”. - In the introductory dialogue “Thousand of civilians” should be “Thousands of civilians” - In the Sons of Korhal tip, you misspelled “Elite” as Elit. Similarly, right after, it says “They continue there service” should be “They continue their service.” Finally, in the same tip, “eraced” should be “erased”. - When informing you about the civilians, Horner said “civilian” instead of “civilians. - In the final cinematic, Marcellus says “And what stops me from just kill you” should be “And what stops me from just killing you”
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In reply to njordys:
Thanks for playing!
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AWS - Patch 1.1.0 is now live!
With the public release of the first map pack consisting of Missions 01-05, an intermission map and a Campaign Launcher having happened last week on my Discord, the maps are now publicly available on SC2Mapster as well, with a few balance updates and minor changes.
You can download the maps here:
Installation guidelines have been provided on the main page and in the downloads page.
For the full patch notes, go here.
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Annihilation Trivia document now available!
This is a bit of an unusual post, but I've decided to upload a Word document containing all the scrapped ideas, notes and random trivia facts I have about Annihilation and its development phase. I've had this sitting on my computer for a while now, and figured I'd release it publicly to anyone who may be interested in this.
You can find the file here:
https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/starcraft-ii-annihilation-campaign/files/3093456
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SURVIVOR 01 FEEDBACK
Good Stuff:
- I enjoyed the terrain of this mission. I also have a thing for snow tilesets, so you get bonus points here.
- Interesting concept of having different variants of the trooper. Always enjoy some good custom units.
- I really like the little tidbits of lore with some of the units. Like how the Marauder is described as having more mobility with less health, and it’s also visually represented in the unit model.
- Attack waves seemed well balanced. I liked how they became a decent challenge later on, sending both ultras and big groups of units.
- Overall mission was pretty standard. A micro section followed by a destroy the enemy base mission. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing. I think it was a nice way to introduce the faction to the player. It’s highly customised, so you wouldn’t want players to be overwhelmed with an overly complex mission objective, so I appreciate that.
- Speaking of the custom factions, I really enjoy the concept of it. Some really interesting ideas and unit models are used for it. The only downside of most of these unit models is that they don’t have their own construction animations, but that’s not a huge issue for me personally. Overall, I’m excited to see what other units are unlocked for this faction.
Suggestions:
- Consider allowing players to skip cinematics.
- Found some big doodads with no pathing, allowing my units to move through. Posted an image below so you can see where.
- Would be interesting if the supply frame and resource panels weren’t visible during the initial micro section. Really no reason for it to be there until you get your base.
- In the cutscene where Ezekiel arrives to your base, the background is all black, as in, the far clip of the camera is not very far. I’d suggest either moving down the camera a bit so you don’t see the blackness, or increasing the far clip (though, you may have reduced this yourself because of frame drops)
- During the cutscene where Ezekiel arrives to your base, I could still see the green selection box for Clair and other units I had selected. I suggest storing the player’s currently selected units and deselect them all when the cinematic starts, then restoring their previously selected units when it ends.
- You have access to the Workshop, yet you don’t actually use it for anything. I found that odd.

Bugs:
- The new Marauder unit have their name displayed as “Unit/Name/Marauder2”
- The Marauder’s attack animations seems bugged. Sometimes, he does not play his attack animation at all, and just stands still while shooting. Other times, he will shoot from one gun and the missile arrives from the other.
- Ezekiel’s Defensive Drone lacks a description. It only displays the cooldown. Also, its name has [PH] at the start of it. Not sure if intended or not.
- After the final cinematic faded out, nothing happened. I didn’t get the victory screen or anything. I was a bit confused.
Grammar & Typos:
- Loading screen: “After the destruction of the entire planet Korhal” add an “of” before Korhal so it becomes “entire planet of Korhal”
- Loading screen: “The Terran was the first to fall” Should be “The Terrans were the first to fall”.
- Loading screen: “when the Lord in-between places emerge soon fell victims to anarchy.” Should be “when the Lord of in-between places emerged soon fell victim to anarchy”.
- Loading screen: “The once left, are survivors,” once should be “ones”.
- Loading screen: “The ones that remain is feral, wild beast.” should be “The ones that remain are feral, wild beasts”.
- Loading screen: “The Lord in-between places began terraforming” similar to a previous mistake, you forget to put “of” after “Lord” so it becomes “Lord of in-between places”.
- Intro cinematic: “You got to be kidding me.. Skulls..” should be “You’ve got” instead of “You got”.
- Intro cinematic: “And now what? You’ll be going to kill me?” Should be either “You’ll be killing me?” or “You’re going to kill me?”. Your choice.
- Intro cinematic: “Help me take down The skulls.” In this line, “The skulls” have The capitalised but not Skulls, yet in the other dialogue lines, it is the opposite; “the Skulls”.
- Intro cinematic: “I’m not overjoyed to go up against the Skulls. Whats the catch.” Instead of punctuation after “What the catch” use a question mark.
- Intro cinematic: “We are cut off from our path back to the colony by feral Zergs”. In this case, it’s just “Zerg” and not “Zergs”.
- Intro cinematic: “There is an abandon “Skull” base just south of here.” abandon should be “abandoned”. Also, after “south of here” you forgot to put a punctuation mark.
- Intro cinematic: “Yeah, we lost Bennet, besides that the rest is alive”. Yeah, we lost Bennet. End the sentence right there. Next part, “Besides that, the rest are alive”.
- The abandoned base ping description says “Abandon base” instead of “Abandoned base”.
- In Clair’s unit description, it says “Clair, has a powerful ranged attack” remove the comma after “Clair”. Also, in her unit description, after the “Can attack ground and air units” there is an additional empty line. You accidentally put another space in there.
- Marauder description: “most of the suit of the originally Marauder was scraped” originally should be “original” and scraped should be “scrapped”. Also in the description, “Because of this, the marauder cannot take as much heat, but get lighter and faster instead.” marauder isn’t capitalised as “Marauder” and get should be “gets”.
- Male Trooper description AND build description: “General-purpose infantry sacrifice movement speed for extra damage”. Change it so that it becomes “General-purpose infantry.” punctuation at the end. Also, sacrifice should be “Sacrifices” and remember to capitalise the S.
- Hack the Abandoned Command Center Objective: Description says “Bring your forces there and hack it to gain control off it”. off should be “of.”
- Midgame cinematic: “I never doubted for a second.” should be “I never doubted YOU for a second”.
- Shelter description: “movement” should be “movement”. In addition, the Shelter’s description in the build menu does not have the extra yellow text as its unit description does.
- Sandbag description: “Applys” should be “Applies”. This mistake is present both in the unit description AND the build menu description.
- The description of the Weapon Racket in the build menu has a bunch of empty space at the bottom. The Weapon Racket’s unit description still uses the Engineering Bay description.
- Ezekiel cinematic: “Exiting is it not?” Exiting should be “Exciting” and add a comma after it.
- Hack for resources tooltip: “When this ability is active the hacker, hack for resources.” Should be, “When this ability is active, the hacker hacks for resources”.
- Field Medic build description says “highjack” should be “hijack”. This is also the case for the Field Medic’s Hijack ability name, Meanwhile, its unit description is missing.
- Female trooper build description: “increast” should be “increased”.
- The build description for the Garage has a bunch of empty space, while its unit description uses the default Factory description.
- Clear Zerg Base description. Should probably be “Clear Zerg Bases” since there’s multiple.
Other Notes:
- In the intro cinematic when Clair “Cam” met the Skulls, she was facing away from them. You can prevent units from facing in directions they shouldn’t be using the trigger “Set Unit State” and turning the “Fidget” state Off. EDIT: In retrospect, she likes to constantly turn during all cutscenes.
- Clair and Ezekiel’s static portraits does not match the animated ones. I posted a picture below so you can see.
- Ezekiel still uses Swann’s default unit description.
- Build Sandbags and Build Shelter uses the same hotkey.
- Build Training Ground and Build Auto-Turret uses the same hotkey.
- Hack for resources uses the same hotkey as “Hold Position”.
- Should probably rename the “Trooper Female” to “Female Trooper” as that is more grammatically correct.
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DARKNESS RISES 4 FEEDBACK:
Good stuff:
- Overall, this mission was fun, but there was quite a few glaring issues. And these are things like noticeable bugs that were not fixed, upper levels of the terrain that are very hard to defend due to limited space, and the fact that the difficulty spike is very steep. The first wave is very easy, but then the next few ones are incredibly hard if you didn’t find the Soul Reapers and knew they were coming. Then for a while, it becomes easy as you have plenty of very good protoss units to help you, until at the very end when the last few attacks suddenly again become insanely hard. So, just a bit of an issue with balancing. I’d recommend trying to rework the attacks somewhat, so that there is a more exponential difficulty curve, and it slowly gets harder and harder over time. That would create a much better mission flow.
- Layout of the base was quite interesting. The cracks of terrain on the lower floor adds a cool effect. However, I do wanna say that maybe the size of the cracks should be decreased a bit. In the late-game, you have very little space to work with due to this.
- I really like the look of the destroyed base. And the little details with one of the windows of the upper area having fallen down was a neat touch.
Suggestions:
- In the intro cinematic, the text crawl that appears before we fade in to the last part with your base dissapears rather fast. Perhaps increase that by a couple of seconds.
- You can build stuff on the bottom of the doodad ramps. This makes them raise a bit which looks very strange. Take a look at the image I posted.
- Consider adding a sound effect for when the Protoss reinforcements arrive.
- In the final cinematic, you slowly zoom towards the edge of the map. The background of korhal adds a nice sense of scale, but the zoom at the end ruins the illusion since you see where the cliffs end and the lava just stops. At this point, it becomes very clear that there is nothing beyond that point. Try to avoid showing the player the edges of the map like this. I showed the exact shot below. Consider showing a different area of the map or pan the camera upwards so you don’t see the cliffs and ruin the immersion.
- Also, in the final cinematic, the drop ships that fly in fly through the giant tree in the background. I suggest either moving their spawn and move destination slightly to the side so they don’t move through the tree, or simply add a no fly zone around the tree so they go around it.
- Once again I can't skip cinematics.
Bugs:
- Nathanial White’s portrait was all messed up in the cinematics. You could only see a bright background but not him. I’ve posted a picture below for reference.
- There’s a bug with Medics and Firebats being built. Medic cost 150/100. This is because when trained, you get 2. The build ability is configured to make an additional Medic. As for the Firebats, they cost 200/50, and when trained, you get 2 of those as well.
- When rescuing the Soul Reapers. the Tech lab on the barracks doesn’t change its color to blue and instead is red. Also, building a tech lab on the other barracks in that base also becomes red.
- After rescuing the Soul Reapers’ the LZ ping remains.
- Selendis warps in a group of the unused Aiur variant of the Void rays that do not have an attack, rendering them useless.
Typos:
- Loading screen tip: You misspelled “Opportunity” and “their”.
- Horner says “We have never met such an enemy… not the Protoss” “Not” should be capitalised.
- In the intro, Marcellus says “sir” 3 times, and all times they are capitalised, even tho they shouldn’t be. In the last line, you also need to change the dialogue slightly so instead of saying “You just sight tight Sir and we will get you out of here in no time.” you change it to “You just sit tight, sir. We will get you out of here in no time.”
Other:
- The loading screen did the same thing with the black borders as the previous mission. Mention again since I don’t know if it’s intended or not.
- When looking at Nathanial’s dialogue in the Message log, his portrait appears as Artanis.
- The two holes in the ground in the low area of the base where there’s lava in the low ground, but there’s some water tiles missing so there’s this big gap with no lava at all. Posted a picture below
- An area of the terrain has textures that aren’t blended in very well. I took a picture below to showcase it.
- When Selendis arrives, Valerian’s dialogue thanking them for coming triggers first.
- Selendis sets up a base but never actually seem to build anything other than the Nexus and the other initial structures. The Probes don’t go to mine either.
Here you go. Hope it's helpful. I'll take a look at the 2 new missions you released a bit later.
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And here's the last image I wanted to post but because of the limit, I'm making a separate post.
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DARKNESS RISES 3 FEEDBACK:
Good stuff:
- Overall, I quite enjoyed this mission. It didn’t really become much harder at any point during the mission though. And by the time I had gotten 2 of the 3 reinforcements, I could basically a-move through everything. I think you could easily add some additional of those powerful Shadow Spawns to spice things up.
- The intro cinematic environment looked great. Good use of doodads!
- The cave environment is awesome as well. We don’t see caves being used too often in SC2, and your take on it is pretty nice! Like the use of the actual mineable minerals and the doodad minerals. I like how there were also various different-looking areas to explore. Every part of the cave had something new for me to explore.
- The Shadow Spawns were a really cool new unit and mechanic for the map. All the unique abilities was a nice touch and kept me on my toes.
One thing I did like is how there was multiple ways you could go, which helped sell the idea that this was a mine with many adjoining tunnels.
Suggestions:
- I was unable to skip the cinematics. I’d recommend adding that so that people can replay the mission and not be forced to sit through them.
- The supply frame is visible during the gameplay. Since supply is not a factor, I’d suggest removing it. Similarly, the Alliance menu is also visible. You can turn that off as well.
- This is a very minor thing, but I would make the “actual” minerals that you’re using as doodads be unselectable, as well as removing their minimap icon so they don’t show up on the minimap. Do the same to the minerals and gas geyser further into the mission. It just adds a little more immersion, imo. You can remove the minimap icon through the “Send Actor Message” action.
- When rescuing the additional troops behind rocks at the bottom of the map, consider ordering the extra units you get to move out of the big mine doodad. I didn’t notice I even got any units and was confused. I provided a screenshot below so you can see, I only spotted the units by looking at the minimap. The units from the other rock sites do move, so I think this is just an oversight on your part.
- Consider adding a visual effect for Squad Sight when it’s active, similar to what the Havocs have.
- There was a doodad in the mission that I noticed had no pathing. Ive posted the exact doodad and location in question as an image below.
- The hotkey for Stimpack is the same as Target Lock, meaning you can’t manually use Target Lock if you want to.
- One tip about terraining. Try to avoid making abrupt changes in textures, unless you’re doing manmade environments. In natural environments, everything should blend it a lot more. Generally, I found the texturing in this mention to be good, but there were some spots where the texture abruptly changes into a new one with no blend values. I posted a screenshot below indicating one such spot.
Bugs:
- In the intro cinematic, Marcellus didn’t face Horner as they were talking. You can prevent units from turning during cinematics by using the “Set Unit State” and turning “Fidget” state off.
- When the “Phantoms” tip popped up, its pop up text was “Shadow Spawns”
Typos:
- Horner’s first line in the intro cinematic capitalizes “Of” in Sons of Korhal. Similarly, in the same line, he says “Good work with evacuating those civilians”. should remove “with” so it becomes simply “Good work evacuating those civilians.”
- In Samuel’s line in the intro cinematic, there’s a period before a question mark after the word “abnormalities”
- Marcellus’ last line in the cinematic. “They have however not reported back.” Should add a comma before and after however, so it looks like this: “They have, however, not reported back.”
- In Marcellus’ unit description, “Of” in Sons of Korhal is capitalized.
- In the Combat Veteran buff icon and command card icon, “Hero’s” is misspelled as “Heros”.
- The Soul Reaper that introduces us to the bonus objective says “massage” instead of “message”.
- Couple of mistakes in the objective description for the clearing the rocks. Firstly, it says “Big chunks of rock a” and it should be “Big chunks of rocks are” Later on, it says “Their s urvival”. You accidentally separated the s from the rest of the word here.
- Marcellus says “What the hell are these things!!” when introduced to the Shadow Spawns. Instead of two exclamation points, make an exclamation point and a question mark, like this “!?”
- Shadow Spawn tip: A couple mistakes here. First off, you say “Shadows” instead of “Shadow” in the description. In addition, “comes from the void” should be changed to “come from the void” as its plural. I would make one final change here. Instead of making “Spawned by an unknown force” a separate sentence, combine it with the last one, so it becomes “These “Shadow Spawns” come from the void, and are spawned by an unknown force.”
- Crazed Miners tip: “Black oz is poring” should be “Black ooze is pouring”.
- Phantoms tip: Instead of “make your forces fight between each other” I’d probably say “Force your units to fight each other”.
- The Voidborns tip: A couple of typos here. “Lord in-between places” you need to add a “of” so its “Lord OF in-between places”. “Base of operations” is misspelled as “bas of operation”. Lastly, you use are instead of “is” at the end.
Other:
- Unsure if this is intended or not, but the loading screen didn’t cover the entire screen, and had some thick black edges. Thought I’d mention it just in case.
- I noticed when looking in the message log that Samuel’s static portrait is of the War Pig marine, and not the same as the animated version the Elite Guard’s have. I posted a couple images below so you can see the comparison.
- When the game started, there was no music. Mentioning just in case, since I don’t know if that was the intention. It showed up when I moved a little further forward.
- Shadow Spawns still use their default unit description.
- Crazed Miners still use their default unit description.
- There was one Shadow Spawn in the area by the bridge to the north of the base you pass by, that was Neutral to me. Unsure if bug or not. Provided a screenshot below.
- Phantoms still use the Dark Archon unit description
- The Secret Documents still use their default unit description mentioning Kerrigan.
- The Phantoms never used Confusion on me. Mentioning this since I’m unsure if it’s bugged and not working or if I was just lucky.
- Right before entering the final area at the top of the map to destroy the machine, there was this big hill made from elevated terrain height. It looked a bit off since you could move on top of it.
Let me know if you have any questions!
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Apologies for the long abscence. I had intended to play the remaining 4 missions and give you some feedback, but I got busy along the way and eventually I forgot about it. I'll get the remaining missions as soon as I can!
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Russian translation now available!
A russian team has taken the liberty of translating the campaign to Russian! Download it here!
On their website you can find more Russian translations of custom campaigns. For a full list of available campaigns in russian, click here!
Thank you guys for taking the time to translate this campaign to Russian. I imagine it must have been a lot of work!
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In reply to njordys:
Thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it!
It's actually funny you mention the lack of indication that you're about to miss your chance at completing the bonus objective on lower difficulties. I had intended to add a piece of dialogue to indicate that, but I forgot. Thanks for reminding me!
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A War Story has just had its first public release. Act 01 Mission 01 is now available for download.
This is to be considered a demo of the campaign to get an idea of what the gameplay and story is like.
The remaining mission of Act 01 along with a potentially updated first mission will be released once the entire act is finished.
Until then, enjoy this taste of what's to come!
If you have any feedback pertaining to this first mission, please leave it here.
You can also join my Discord, where I post regular updates about my progress, and also post a variety of showcases. You can also leave your feedback there, if you have any. https://discord.gg/Ztu44gZ
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In reply to raducu273:
Have to agree with Jayborino here. You are being very offensive, and presenting your feedback this way does not help the creator. Why not actually try to explain what made the mission so challenging and deliver some examples?
If I found a comment like this on one of my projects I'd just delete it and move on.
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In reply to MaskedImposter:
What can I say, I'm foreign, I'm allowed to make mistakes. XD
Thanks for pointing it out, though!
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A War Story begins now!
With the necessary data work now completed, production of A War Story is now starting, and I will be beginning work on Act 1.
I've updated the main map page with some additional information, including the title reveals for the missions of Act 1 and the intermissions that inhabit it. https://www.sc2mapster.com/projects/custom-campaign-a-war-story
The campaign is going to be released in an Act-based system, meaning that all missions of Act 1 will be released at the same time when the entire Act is complete and have undergone balance testing.
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Darkness Rises 2 Feedback:
Fun mission! The terrain really sold it as well. One thing I particularly loved was how you used those big bridges as walkable segments when rescuing the civilians. Looked really cool how it was all scaled up like that. For doodads, I’d be careful with placing those large korhal building doodads right next to the playable map area. While they help immerse the player into the world, they are very huge and will block your vision by quite a bit.
All the enemy units guarding the evacuation point where all tightly packed within that small area next to the beacon. I’d recommend placing a proper defence over there, and have the units being a little more spread out, instead of just putting a bunch of units on top of the point. Looks a little more natural that way, and it makes it easier for the enemy to retaliate as well, as they won’t get stuck on their own units. You can still make them send more troops, but at least make it so that all rallying units don’t just move to the same point and gather in one big group.
With that being said, I also think there should be a limit. I didn’t move towards the evac point until like 10 minutes had passed, and in that time, they had gathered that huge group over there.
It felt a little weird that there was no markers or anything on the civilians. Would be helpful to have them appear on the map as either pings or have them be revealed. Furthermore, the ping that shows the location of the next arriving civilians is black, which makes it very hard to tell apart from the fog of war.
Bugs:
- As soon as the map starts, I get that red flashy visual similar to when Marcellus gets attacked. It happened a few seconds later as well. Perhaps disable that during cinematics?
- When I rescued the civilians at the bottom left corner of the map, nothing seemed to happen. Got no dialogue or anything confirming it, and the civilians were just standing there at the corner not doing anything. Look at the image I included to see what I mean.’
- Sometimes the civilians heading for the evac point bug out. Look at the second picture I posted, where 2 civilians are just standing close to the point.
- During the final cinematic, while talking to the Inquisitor, Marcellus turned around, so he wasn’t facing him while they were talking. You can turn this off by disabling Turnable state on the unit.
- In the initial shot of the cinematic, additional civilians were on the surface that just stood in a line. Those are the civilians that were on the way to the objective but stopped when I completed it. Would suggest removing them when the cinematic starts.
Typos:
- The behaviour icon and passive icon on the command card for Combat Veteran Buff it says “Heros” instead of “Heroes”.
- When Horner’s first dialogue he misspells his own name as “Horne”.
- In the introductory dialogue “Thousand of civilians” should be “Thousands of civilians”
- In the Sons of Korhal tip, you misspelled “Elite” as Elit. Similarly, right after, it says “They continue there service” should be “They continue their service.” Finally, in the same tip, “eraced” should be “erased”.
- When informing you about the civilians, Horner said “civilian” instead of “civilians.
- In the final cinematic, Marcellus says “And what stops me from just kill you” should be “And what stops me from just killing you”