Alright, I've been going through the first mission again after looking through some of you guy's comments, and I went ahead and made some changes to the map. These are listed underneath,
Things that have changed:
Thanks to StealthToast's suggestion, the Nydus worms at the final part of mission #1 now spawns a smaller amount of units with lower intervals between spawns. This change I feel will make the Nydus worms seem more realistic and also makes the Nydus worms a bit harder to destroy, instead of having them spawn a giant wave at once. The animations also work perfectly, both for unloading and birth.
Thanks to EivindL's suggestion, I have removed the ability buttons from units where I don't give you the option to research that ability. This will resolve any confusion that may have been.
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND:
Downloading the map from the main map page will NOT contain all current and previous updates. I'll release an updated (hopefully complete) version of the first mission in a folder with mission 2 once it has been completed.
That looks pretty awesome. I had expected something not manmade, but I suppose the same could be said for AS03. :D Can't wait to play it!
EDIT: I'm hoping to do Umoja myself in my next campaign. It's a cool tileset and one that I unfortunately haven't found a place for yet.
Don't worry. Not the entirety of the environment will be manmade. About half of it will also be an underground theme. ;)
I totally agree on the Umoja tileset. It's also one of my personal favorite ones, and I when I planned out this mission I just knew that I was going to use the Umoja tileset as it looks much better than many other manmade tilesets, in my opinion.
The tileset-specific doodads and textures provide you with so many options which I think can't be achievef with some installations.
Immortal Forge is another great looking one as well :) I might actually use that later.
Ahh, I see. I'd recommend using a different wireframe color for Reeves, though, even if it's his color it blends in a little too well with the UI background.
Yeah, I guess the color does provide a bit of an issue. I want to keep the dark color scheme though, so I suppose I could change it to something like grey that wouldn't blend in to the background as much. I'll have to experiment a bit on that part :)
Although, to be honest, the loading screen looked a bit weird. It was also rather stretched (at least for my resolution), I'd recommend using Flinkelinks' pic instead, or a screencap without the UI at least. :P
Yeah, I realized myself that that was a rather bad screenshot, after hearing some people complain about it. I have already changed that in a newer version not released.
- There seemed to be that Actor Errors message box on the top left when the game started, something about Missile Turrets, Bunkers and Archons? Also, what's that "USER" box on the top right?
I have absolutely no idea why they are there and it annoys me so much, because I don't know how to fix this issue atm. I've searched through triggers to find something like error message/actor message but no success thus far. It appears in every map I make for some reason.
- Reeves' wireframe doesn't seem to have any border, looks rather weird when other units are selected. Also, Barry's wireframe has a blue border?
Both of these were done deliberately. The reason being is I wanted for people to be able to easily distinguish between Hero units and regular units in subgroups, and the reason for the black (That's why you can't see it) and blue colors, is basically because of that's the color I chose for Baldwin and Reeves, again, to make them be easily distinguishable on the field.
- The help item/hint says that Barry's Adrenaline Rush takes 10 health but increases his speeds, but the ability says it costs 30 health
Thanks for notifying me. What a nice find. I have no idea how I didn't notice that myself. I've gone through the triggers and changed that so it displays 30 health on the tip too.
- Could you put some distance on that camera when we get to control the base? It looks alright when controlling a few units, but a base and army are a different story :P
That have already been changed yesterday. I just haven't released the updated version, but thanks anyway. It makes me realize how much people actually want it to be changed :)
- The Siege Tank attacking the rocks didn't turn its turrets towards the rocks, and the Reapers didn't play their attack animations (although the attack effects were there)
I've been working on fixing this issue. I copy/pasted their weapons and changed them so they could attack invulnerable units, that's it. I don't exactly why it caused the Reapers and Siege Tank to do that. I might have to go through the weapons again to see why the Reaper's doesn't play the animation, as it bugs me too.
Regarding the Siege Tank, that I've been attempting to fix too, but that is one of the more annoying bugs. I'll keep working on it.
- While I liked the Nydus Worms, I think they could've been done better. Like, instead of spawning a mass of units instantly, why not have them spawn the units over time in low intervals? (and play that spitting animation/unloading sound effect) That would look much better, in my opinion.
That's actually a nice suggestion. That will clearly make more sense too. The reason I did it the current way was pretty much because it was easier to just spawn a bunch of units at once and then check every few seconds if the Nydus Worm is still alive. With the other way, it get's a little more complicated. I'll probably try to do it when I have time.
Sounds good. Can't wait to play the next mission. I like the title! Sounds promising! By the way, how much of the story have you planned ahead?
I have planned the overall idea of how I want each mission to progress, however many details are still missing. I have details of the first 4 missions so far, but I normally get even more ideas as I develop the terrain. I also have the ending planned, but even that is still in planning and without many details.
Hello again. I felt inspired to make a loading screen from the intro cinematic so I derped around with Photoshop for a bit but it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped it would. Nevertheless, I hope you like it.
Haha, thanks! I love it! I really like how you put his face on the actual image too.
I really appreciate that you actually took the time to make that. :D
Thoughts while playing through mission: Cut scenes make me wish for voice acting. (There's something about always having to look down to read lots of dialogue that's a tad annoying)
I don't like how zoomed in the camera is.
Believe me, I would love to do actual voice acting for the game, and during planning of the first mission, I actually recorded some unit sounds for Reeves, but I ended up scratching that idea completely as it didn't sound too good. Unfortunately, that is out of my power. I simply don't possess a good enough program or microphone to stuff like that. On the other hand, I don't personally feel like the lack of voice acting is the biggest problem. It may be a little harder to watch the actual cinematic to begin with, but I mean, there's always the option to replay later.
I've heard a couple people so far complain about the zoomed camera. I'll look into it, but I don't want to raise it too high either, since I think the zoomed camera is a really cool element for micro missions. I'll see what I can do.
Aww, Maxwell died going after a nydus worm with friends while defending the base. People usually don't like to replay a mission to get back to where they were, and since Blizzard doesn't allow map makers to use a checkpoint save system, its probably best to make some sort of revival system.
As EivindL said, saving is your friend. I think that's really the best solution to that issue. A revival system just doesn't suit in a campaign mission if you ask me. Saving is much easier too.
Edit: I added the show/hide mouse cursor action after cinematic mode was engaged in the Dialog - Difficulty Choosing trigger, and that fixed it. You would want to add the action again after a difficulty is chosen to hide it though.
Quite a few people seem to be having this problem it seems. I'll see what I can do, but it's hard for me to actually confirm if I fixed it, since I'm not having that issue at all. I find it rather strange that so many people have it that way.
This is just me, but I would have chosen the underhead shot of Reeves in the intro. It looked awesome. That, or something like the dropship flying in. The problem with using a gameplay shot is that the command menu kinda looks awkward under the loading bar (it clashes, which is not an annoyance you will be faced with if using a cinematic shot).
That's actually a pretty good suggestion. I guess the bar does get in the way a little. I'll definitely consider it.
I meant that it was greyed out. I thought perhaps we would be able to research it later, but we couldn't.
Oh, that's just because I made the upgrades like they are in multiplayer, where you can see them before they have actually been researched. However, I decided to prevent the player from actually being able to research it, as I felt it was a little powerful for this mission.
That's true, didn't think of that. All my story-lines were told from one side, though. I'm suspecting it's not that way with you, or am I wrong?
Every race has more or less their own story, but the stories do connect to each other in various ways. Some of the information you get on one mission, might actually only end up making sense a few missions later, where you play another race and experience another side of the story.
Thank you for the descriptive feedback. Helps me a lot. Now, to answer some of your questions:
The Loading Screen - To be honest with you, I've gone through a lot of iterations about what to use as the loading screen. I took around 5 - 6 screenshots and speculated, and it eventually led me to choosing that one. Might not be the best though, I just really liked it because I managed to capture it with perfect timing, so I got that maximum effect. I will make the loading screens different for each level though, so mission 2 might have a scene from a cinematic. It just depends on what I feel looks best.
I like that you enjoyed the experience as much as you did. Everything from the mystery, the progression of the story and the characters was something that I wanted to focus on a lot because I felt like it was extremely important for a mission like this. Your comment just makes me realize how well I pulled it off, so that's good :)
Yes, that was the Psi Destroyer. I thought it had an awesome model, and it with a little resizing, it suited perfectly for the map.
As I said to Flinkelinkes, the many test runs I had been doing on the zoomed camera made me used to that view, so I completely forgot to change its height in the second part of the mission. I don't know if it's too low though in the first part of the mission. That might just be me, but I thought that distance worked perfectly even during early testing.
About the bugs - With the marine stim, what exactly do you mean? Could you press the button but nothing happened, or was it greyed out? The reason I ask is because I noticed if you have both Barry Baldwin and a Marine highlighted, you could switch to a marine in the subgroup and actually see the button available for use, but if you press it, it will activate Barry Baldwin's ability. I'm still trying to work this out though. The same goes for the Siege Tank weapon. I'm working on fixing this.
I hope you understood what I meant. If not, tell me and I'll try to explain it in a better way.
The boss was kinda added as an experiment. I wanted to have really intense ending to the mission, and that's why I added the boss. It was a very simple boss though, it was more or less just to try out how I could make it work. I will definitely try to improve bosses for future missions.
Btw, Crimson Moon and Amber Sun was kind of a multi-perspective story wasn't it? I mean, sometimes we get missions with Henderson, then Janus and even Bayo. I just use different races instead of different characters.
I actually completely forgot to change the camera height lol. I guess it was because I had been testing the map so often on that height that I kinda got used to it. I'll change it asap.
And for the boss, I do agree it doesn't look AS good as it could. The fact is, this was my first boss battle and I just wanted to try it out and see how it would work in my map, and as a result, I picked an existing, and very simple model with a slightly different color scheme. I can definitely change it later though.
To answer your questions regarding the lore and the storyline: Even though I didn't specify the time, my vision was to have it take place a few years after the events of HotS and possibly LotV.
Baldwin's backstory does not really relate to the Guild Wars. The "Old War" was a specific war that took place a few years before the start of this campaign. You will get more information about this later in the game, because it will play a decent role in how Baldwin as a character, and also other members of the CPG Rebels will function.
Reeves is a ghost. He just works for a specific covert-investigation organization instead of the regular Ghost Program.
Starcraft II: Annihilation is my single-player campaign project for StarCraft II. The campaign contains +20 missions with many different mission scenarios, as well as three intersecting storylines. More info can be found on my main map page.
I just released the completed version of the very first mission and would like to get you guy's opinions on how well I did. How well did you enjoy the mission, and was there anything particular you liked or hated? Don't be afraid to criticise. If there's something you thought was absolutely terrible, then go ahead and say it and explain why so I can improve future missions.
Now, I know I said "completed" version of the first mission, and even though I have tested everything there may still be minor bugs and other things that needs to be fixed. This map should be defined as "Beta".
KEEP IN MIND:
When you pick your difficulty level, make sure to set your Editor Prefences to that difficulty as well, as pre-placed units doesn't seem to change depending on what difficulty you chose, if you play the game in the editor. That'll give you the best experience. Everything else works fine though.
Please, enjoy the mission :)
The AI is not active by default on anything that is not a melee map. You need to activate the AI first, and this can be done in Triggers by the "Start Campaign AI For Player", and then pick the player that owns the Zerg units. This should fix that issue.
Nevermind! I found a very simple solution to the problem, by simply copy-pasting each of the unit's weapons and allowing them to attack invulnerable units. Then, I went into the Trigger editor and used the "Remove Weapon from Unit" and "Add Weapon to Unit" actions and added their new one. They look exactly alike, so you can't see the difference. :D
I'm working on a map and in it, I have a place where you're defending your base while your allies destroy a set of rocks blocking your path. The objective is then to defend until they've destroyed it. The thing is though, I can easily make a ton more units and then start destroying the rocks quicker than intended, and I want to find a way to change that.
Is there any way to make a specific unit invulnerable to a certain set of units or even a specific player? I know you can do something like that, as Blizzard actually uses this method for the "The Dig" mission in Wings of Liberty. The Protoss Relic Shrines there can only be destroyed by the Laser Drill, while they are completely invulnerable to me.
Anyone knows how to do that would be a great help to me.
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Alright, I've been going through the first mission again after looking through some of you guy's comments, and I went ahead and made some changes to the map. These are listed underneath,
Things that have changed:
PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: Downloading the map from the main map page will NOT contain all current and previous updates. I'll release an updated (hopefully complete) version of the first mission in a folder with mission 2 once it has been completed.
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@DEFILERRULEZ: Go
Thank you for playing and providing me with your feedback. Always a pleasure :)
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Don't worry. Not the entirety of the environment will be manmade. About half of it will also be an underground theme. ;)
I totally agree on the Umoja tileset. It's also one of my personal favorite ones, and I when I planned out this mission I just knew that I was going to use the Umoja tileset as it looks much better than many other manmade tilesets, in my opinion. The tileset-specific doodads and textures provide you with so many options which I think can't be achievef with some installations.
Immortal Forge is another great looking one as well :) I might actually use that later.
Yeah, I guess the color does provide a bit of an issue. I want to keep the dark color scheme though, so I suppose I could change it to something like grey that wouldn't blend in to the background as much. I'll have to experiment a bit on that part :)
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Terrain on mission #2 is about 30-35% complete now. I took a screenshot of one of my personal favorite locations to give you guys a little teaser :)
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@StealthToast: Go
Thanks for the feedback. Helps me a lot, and I'm pleased to hear you enjoyed the map :)
Now regarding the bugs:
Yeah, I realized myself that that was a rather bad screenshot, after hearing some people complain about it. I have already changed that in a newer version not released.
I have absolutely no idea why they are there and it annoys me so much, because I don't know how to fix this issue atm. I've searched through triggers to find something like error message/actor message but no success thus far. It appears in every map I make for some reason.
Both of these were done deliberately. The reason being is I wanted for people to be able to easily distinguish between Hero units and regular units in subgroups, and the reason for the black (That's why you can't see it) and blue colors, is basically because of that's the color I chose for Baldwin and Reeves, again, to make them be easily distinguishable on the field.
Thanks for notifying me. What a nice find. I have no idea how I didn't notice that myself. I've gone through the triggers and changed that so it displays 30 health on the tip too.
That have already been changed yesterday. I just haven't released the updated version, but thanks anyway. It makes me realize how much people actually want it to be changed :)
I've been working on fixing this issue. I copy/pasted their weapons and changed them so they could attack invulnerable units, that's it. I don't exactly why it caused the Reapers and Siege Tank to do that. I might have to go through the weapons again to see why the Reaper's doesn't play the animation, as it bugs me too. Regarding the Siege Tank, that I've been attempting to fix too, but that is one of the more annoying bugs. I'll keep working on it.
That's actually a nice suggestion. That will clearly make more sense too. The reason I did it the current way was pretty much because it was easier to just spawn a bunch of units at once and then check every few seconds if the Nydus Worm is still alive. With the other way, it get's a little more complicated. I'll probably try to do it when I have time.
0
I have planned the overall idea of how I want each mission to progress, however many details are still missing. I have details of the first 4 missions so far, but I normally get even more ideas as I develop the terrain. I also have the ending planned, but even that is still in planning and without many details.
Haha, thanks! I love it! I really like how you put his face on the actual image too. I really appreciate that you actually took the time to make that. :D
Believe me, I would love to do actual voice acting for the game, and during planning of the first mission, I actually recorded some unit sounds for Reeves, but I ended up scratching that idea completely as it didn't sound too good. Unfortunately, that is out of my power. I simply don't possess a good enough program or microphone to stuff like that. On the other hand, I don't personally feel like the lack of voice acting is the biggest problem. It may be a little harder to watch the actual cinematic to begin with, but I mean, there's always the option to replay later.
I've heard a couple people so far complain about the zoomed camera. I'll look into it, but I don't want to raise it too high either, since I think the zoomed camera is a really cool element for micro missions. I'll see what I can do.
I didn't find that to be an issue at all. I just used to Reeves since he one-shots them, and then that solves the problem instantly.
As EivindL said, saving is your friend. I think that's really the best solution to that issue. A revival system just doesn't suit in a campaign mission if you ask me. Saving is much easier too.
Quite a few people seem to be having this problem it seems. I'll see what I can do, but it's hard for me to actually confirm if I fixed it, since I'm not having that issue at all. I find it rather strange that so many people have it that way.
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UPDATE: 11/05 - 2014
Feedback on the first mission has been great so far, and I've been able to improve it a lot thanks to all you guy's suggestions. Thank you!
Things that have changed:
Also, I've begun making the terrain for the second mission "An Unfriendly Ally" and it's looking quite good at the moment.
Thanks again for the support guys :D
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@Metalking1417: Go
That's a really weird bug. That hasn't occured to me before. Did you try restart or anything?
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That's actually a pretty good suggestion. I guess the bar does get in the way a little. I'll definitely consider it.
Oh, that's just because I made the upgrades like they are in multiplayer, where you can see them before they have actually been researched. However, I decided to prevent the player from actually being able to research it, as I felt it was a little powerful for this mission.
Hmm, that's an interesting find. He shouldn't be doing that. I'll look into it.
Every race has more or less their own story, but the stories do connect to each other in various ways. Some of the information you get on one mission, might actually only end up making sense a few missions later, where you play another race and experience another side of the story.
0
@EivindL: Go
Thank you for the descriptive feedback. Helps me a lot. Now, to answer some of your questions:
The Loading Screen - To be honest with you, I've gone through a lot of iterations about what to use as the loading screen. I took around 5 - 6 screenshots and speculated, and it eventually led me to choosing that one. Might not be the best though, I just really liked it because I managed to capture it with perfect timing, so I got that maximum effect. I will make the loading screens different for each level though, so mission 2 might have a scene from a cinematic. It just depends on what I feel looks best.
I like that you enjoyed the experience as much as you did. Everything from the mystery, the progression of the story and the characters was something that I wanted to focus on a lot because I felt like it was extremely important for a mission like this. Your comment just makes me realize how well I pulled it off, so that's good :)
Yes, that was the Psi Destroyer. I thought it had an awesome model, and it with a little resizing, it suited perfectly for the map.
As I said to Flinkelinkes, the many test runs I had been doing on the zoomed camera made me used to that view, so I completely forgot to change its height in the second part of the mission. I don't know if it's too low though in the first part of the mission. That might just be me, but I thought that distance worked perfectly even during early testing.
About the bugs - With the marine stim, what exactly do you mean? Could you press the button but nothing happened, or was it greyed out? The reason I ask is because I noticed if you have both Barry Baldwin and a Marine highlighted, you could switch to a marine in the subgroup and actually see the button available for use, but if you press it, it will activate Barry Baldwin's ability. I'm still trying to work this out though. The same goes for the Siege Tank weapon. I'm working on fixing this. I hope you understood what I meant. If not, tell me and I'll try to explain it in a better way.
The boss was kinda added as an experiment. I wanted to have really intense ending to the mission, and that's why I added the boss. It was a very simple boss though, it was more or less just to try out how I could make it work. I will definitely try to improve bosses for future missions.
Btw, Crimson Moon and Amber Sun was kind of a multi-perspective story wasn't it? I mean, sometimes we get missions with Henderson, then Janus and even Bayo. I just use different races instead of different characters.
@Metalking1417: Go
I'm not sure I understand the issue here. Can you elaborate a little bit? What wasn't working, the Difficulty choosing menu?
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@Flinkelinks: Go
Thanks for the feedback.
I actually completely forgot to change the camera height lol. I guess it was because I had been testing the map so often on that height that I kinda got used to it. I'll change it asap. And for the boss, I do agree it doesn't look AS good as it could. The fact is, this was my first boss battle and I just wanted to try it out and see how it would work in my map, and as a result, I picked an existing, and very simple model with a slightly different color scheme. I can definitely change it later though.
To answer your questions regarding the lore and the storyline: Even though I didn't specify the time, my vision was to have it take place a few years after the events of HotS and possibly LotV.
Baldwin's backstory does not really relate to the Guild Wars. The "Old War" was a specific war that took place a few years before the start of this campaign. You will get more information about this later in the game, because it will play a decent role in how Baldwin as a character, and also other members of the CPG Rebels will function.
Reeves is a ghost. He just works for a specific covert-investigation organization instead of the regular Ghost Program.
0
Starcraft II: Annihilation is my single-player campaign project for StarCraft II. The campaign contains +20 missions with many different mission scenarios, as well as three intersecting storylines. More info can be found on my main map page.
I just released the completed version of the very first mission and would like to get you guy's opinions on how well I did. How well did you enjoy the mission, and was there anything particular you liked or hated? Don't be afraid to criticise. If there's something you thought was absolutely terrible, then go ahead and say it and explain why so I can improve future missions.
Now, I know I said "completed" version of the first mission, and even though I have tested everything there may still be minor bugs and other things that needs to be fixed. This map should be defined as "Beta".
Download the first mission here.
KEEP IN MIND: When you pick your difficulty level, make sure to set your Editor Prefences to that difficulty as well, as pre-placed units doesn't seem to change depending on what difficulty you chose, if you play the game in the editor. That'll give you the best experience. Everything else works fine though. Please, enjoy the mission :)
0
The AI is not active by default on anything that is not a melee map. You need to activate the AI first, and this can be done in Triggers by the "Start Campaign AI For Player", and then pick the player that owns the Zerg units. This should fix that issue.
0
Nevermind! I found a very simple solution to the problem, by simply copy-pasting each of the unit's weapons and allowing them to attack invulnerable units. Then, I went into the Trigger editor and used the "Remove Weapon from Unit" and "Add Weapon to Unit" actions and added their new one. They look exactly alike, so you can't see the difference. :D
0
I'm working on a map and in it, I have a place where you're defending your base while your allies destroy a set of rocks blocking your path. The objective is then to defend until they've destroyed it. The thing is though, I can easily make a ton more units and then start destroying the rocks quicker than intended, and I want to find a way to change that.
Is there any way to make a specific unit invulnerable to a certain set of units or even a specific player? I know you can do something like that, as Blizzard actually uses this method for the "The Dig" mission in Wings of Liberty. The Protoss Relic Shrines there can only be destroyed by the Laser Drill, while they are completely invulnerable to me. Anyone knows how to do that would be a great help to me.