StarCraft II: Annihilation Campaign

Table of Contents

Current Status:

Mission 24 "Edge of Annihilation" has officially been released, and with it, the entire campaign. I hope you enjoy!

Introduction:

This is my first serious map project for StarCraft II. I've always enjoyed the campaign aspect of StarCraft and have played through both the Wings of Liberty and Heart of the Swarm campaigns several times, along with a multitude of different campaigns made by the public. I therefore decided it was time to create my own.

"Annihilation" is a 24 mission campaign with three different story perspectives that will intertwine into one final conclusion. Featuring high-quality terrain, lots of different characters as well as a wide variety of mission scenarios, this campaign, featuring 4 difficulty levels, will hopefully create an enjoyable experience for players of every skill level.

Link to the official Map Feedback thread can be found here.

Features:

Three seperate storylines intersecting and coming together into one final conclusion.
Play as both Terran, Zerg and Protoss.
Heavy focus on quality terrain and environments.
Custom soundtracks and several interesting Hero units.
24 missions pitting you up against many different challenges and mission scenarios.
A total of 14 boss battles pitting you up against a variety of different tacticts and strategies.

Story:

It all starts with Investigator Maxwell Reeves of the Spec-Ops: Infiltration Program, who sets surface on the planet Callithus IV to assist the Terran settlers with what initially appears to be a minor Zerg problem. However, they soon realize that events has been set in motion that will potentially change the fate of the universe, and it will be up to the different clans to work together against stopping this threat.

Missions:

Annihilation 01: Mindless Creatures - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 02: An Unfriendly Ally - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 03: The Idu'ran - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 04: Fallen Brethren - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 05: Departure - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 06: The Daggerfang - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 07: Homecoming - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 08: The Wandering Shadow - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 09: Bio-Weapons - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 10: Newfound Enemies - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 11: Ussorus - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 12: Reawakening - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 13: Facility 14A - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 14: The First Step - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 15: Entrance Into Risk - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 16: The Breach - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 17: Last Stand - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 18: A Major Downfall - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 19: Planetary Incursion - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 20: Sentient Reality - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 21: Mysterious Revelations - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 22: The United Forces - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 23: Frontal Push - Completed (RELEASE)
Annihilation 24: Edge of Annihilation - Completed (RELEASE)

Difficulty Levels:

This campaign contains 4 difficulty levels, ranging from Casual, Normal, Hard and Brutal. Your success in completing the individual missions on these difficulties greatly depends on your level of skill.

Casual: A difficulty requiring little to no multitasking and micro skills, featuring less enemies and focus on story.

Normal: A difficulty requiring minor multitasking and micro skills, featuring fewer enemies and focus on story and minor challenges.

Hard: A difficulty requiring good multitasking and micro skills, featuring a high number enemies and focus on challenges and entertainment.

Brutal: A difficulty requiring great multitasking and micro skills, featuring tremendously more enemies and heavy focus on challenge.

Troubleshooting:

You may have trouble opening these maps if you open them directly from the map itself. If you do have this issue and the map opens up as just an empty map, then I suggest you open it in the following way:

Open up the StarCraft II Editor.
Once finished, go to "Open".
Find the map in your catalog, and select it. Using this method to open any maps from the campaign should fix any issues you have with opening them.

Music

You may notice some of the music in the campaign are not from StarCraft, in fact, I focused heavily on the use of soundtracks to bring the campaign to life. If you wish to see a full list of all the tracks confirmed to be used, click here.

Credits:

Special thanks to the respected composers of the various different music soundtracks used in this campaign.
Special thanks to Thrikodias for the awesome custom models and units used in this campaign.
Special thanks to VastanX for creating the unique models for various Hero units used in this campaign.
Special thanks to all those who play and provide useful feedback to help improve these maps.
Special thanks to users JayborinoPlays, deltronLive, Redlerred7 xMasterKD and Palnai for playing and providing entertainment and feedback for this campaign.

Patch Notes:

Current changes are planned for the campaign:

A24: Fixed an issue causing the Annihilator to get the wrong shield values with each wave on certain difficulties.
A24: Fixed an issue causing the Spec-Ops: Assault Division to become invulnerable and remain on the map if they were called down more than once.
A24: Reduced the amount of screen shaking during the final escape section.
A24: Increased the size of the Annihilator's "Total Annihilation" ability marker prior to casting.
A24: Fixed an issue causing the Annihilator's retreat trigger to bug out.
A24: Every enemy Planetary Fortress destroyed now increases the damage that the Annihilator takes by 20%.
A24: Reduced the Annihilator's armor value from 5 to 3.

Screenshots & Videos:

Comments

DudkiSC2
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#123 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jul 26, 2018
In reply to UnrealUnknown0:

I apologize. It's an issue in a couple maps. I thought I had fixed all the blocked pathways with the latest update. I'll upload a new version right away.

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UnrealUnknown0
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#121 UnrealUnknown0

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Posted Jul 19, 2018
I started to play 2 days ago, amazing work by the way, but Protoss cannot be controled in anyway.

Interesting and cool idea, but it's impossible. And a question, this campaign is placed after or before Amon war?

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DudkiSC2
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#124 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jul 26, 2018
In reply to UnrealUnknown0:

Which mission are you referring to?

And to answer your question about whether it takes place before or after the Amon war, it takes place after, but it's an alternate timeline where the Protoss didn't recapture Aiur.

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Kirlock
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#119 Kirlock

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Posted Jul 2, 2018
So.. in watching some of jayborino's playthroughs of some missions, I noticed my model/portrait for Arrow doesn't match the one in his games.
I had a similar issue with another campaign, where it replaced someone's portrait with Nova, but it also messed up some actual gameplay as a result. I hadn't noticed any gameplay issues with this campaign due to this, but maybe I just don't know what I'm missing?

Do you know if I did something to mess it up or if there is a way for me to fix this? Or is it just because the maps were made awhile ago and something got changed in the blizz files for the game? I do own all the blizz missions (such as nova pack and LOTV) if that makes a difference.

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DudkiSC2
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#120 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jul 2, 2018
In reply to Kirlock:

Now that's an issue I haven't heard before. I tried looking at some of my maps again, and the portrait for Arrow is definitely the same. (It's supposed to be the one in Jayborino's videos).

I wish I knew what was going on. Maybe some data bugged out upon downloading, but again, that has never happened before, so funny it should happen now.

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Kirlock
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#115 Kirlock

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Posted Jun 28, 2018
Quote from farkybunny >>

In reply to DudkiSC2:

For now I'm stuck on 15, Entrance into Risk. I think the 'casual' difficulty setting is broken.

EDIT: originally quoted more of his post, but it got marked as spam? not sure if it's showing up for others, so reposting with less quoted.

Everything he said.. holy crap that mission is ridiculous. I'm in the same boat, play brutal co-ops all the time and can do most brutations, but I'd been having trouble even on normal difficulty with some maps. So, I went down to casual on this one, just wanting to cruise through it. NOPE! No chance. I even used a cheat code for 5k of each resource, still couldn't do it. There's attack waves dropping every minute or so, on every side, plus 2 really entrenched/populated bases to clear? Not counting the first expo one, that's not quite as populated with units. That's harder then most blizzard brutal missions. Plus, you've got enemy compositions that are great at cracking static defenses, so it's not like you can just set up a big amount of them and be fine. You can't be clever AND send a ton of units at the player. For casual, the dropship attack waves that hit on every side should be like 3 marines and a medic, for perspective. Instead, it's like 8 marines, 2 firebats, 2 medics, a siege tank or two, a thor, couple goliaths, etc.. on EACH side, plus the wraiths that trigger from elsewhere when you take an amplifier. I can't even imagine what brutal looks like if that's casual.

If you just had to get all 4 of them, and not also clear the protoss out, it'd be a lot better. You could possibly cheese it a bit, but for casual/normal settings you could reduce the total number of units everywhere in HALF and it'd still be tougher then it should be for those settings.
It also didn't progress after I cleared all the protoss, but I'm gonna chalk that up to it bugging out from the cheat codes. I sure hope 'clear all protoss' doesn't mean there's a cloaked observer sitting somewhere I have to track down, like in that one previous map and the burrowed zerg. Not sure why you think that kind of objective would be fun man.. Make a trigger to reveal all the protoss units and structures at that point, or after a certain amount of time, if you really want to use that as an objective.

Last edited by Kirlock: Jun 28, 2018

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DudkiSC2
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#116 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jun 29, 2018
In reply to Kirlock:

There are several fundamental issues with Mission 15. I personally never had much trouble beating it even on the hardest difficulty, but I'm also the developer, so that doesn't come as a surprise.

The problem with the map arises with the fact that a lot of stuff isn't clearly explained. For example, new players don't realize that despite the player having successfully defended the portal amplifiers for 3 minutes, it doesn't get marked as complete unless you have already cleared out the protoss defenders near the portal itself. Another issue is the fact that most people don't know that structures can also keep the amplifiers activated, which, by having that knowledge, would make the holdout part severely easier since you can set up a line of cannons, shield batteries and possibly Khaydarin Monoliths to keep the R.S.S.I at bay.

There's also just a problem with the way you activate the amplifiers. It happens in an instant, subsequently sending a wave of R.S.S.I at the player, even if the player didn't intend to activate it. I should really have put a timer indication before activating them.

This mission in particular a lot of people have problems with. Not just with the difficulty, but of the general design of the map, as well. I would like one day to go rework it and make it more accessible for newer players, especially for lower difficulties. I just haven't gotten around to it.

Lastly, for the Protoss objective not being completed, I found that some people think they've cleared the entire base, only to leave it without realizing that a unit was rebuilt and rallied to one of the corners of the base that you don't easily notice. This has occured several times for me as well. If you are certain you checked every part of the base and it still didn't complete, then I apologize. Not quite sure what went wrong during your playthrough.

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Kirlock
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#118 Kirlock

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Posted Jun 29, 2018
In reply to DudkiSC2:

I'm tempted to try it on brutal, to see the difference. Part of me wonders if something got reversed and casual/normal is actually harder.

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Kirlock
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#110 Kirlock

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Posted Jun 27, 2018
Still playing my way through, up to mission 12 right now. Overall, the campaign has been great.
I could write 10x more text about what's good, but it's easier to point out the few issues I have and you can assume everything else is great :)

The last few missions have felt like the difficulty is off and/or there's some very tedious or annoying game mechanics. Not talking about difficult puzzles, but rather like on mission 10, with the protoss dudes and hopping between the three entrances to the base, opening doors in each of the others. There wasn't any clues or tricks to solving it earlier, you just had to run around, back and forth, hopping in and out of the drop ship. It was simply trial and error plus a little guesswork. The constant loading in and out of the dropship became very annoying as a result. You couldn't see the other maps, so you had to make an educated guess as to which one got opened if it wasn't in the current map.

Prior to that, the assassin's creed homage with the war pig was annoying, only because you can be IN grass and he'll see you if any part of the model crosses into another square that isn't in the grass. It was better to just stand behind it and not chance it. Also, his detection radius is not obvious and takes trial and error to figure out. It made solving the door very tricky to figure out, as I was too afraid to go in quickly after him. Spent a ton of time trying to find an alternate entrance.

Oh, and the Malrick fight with Reeves and the Superfriends needs a better tip/hint about the objective of the fight. I beat him, but I'm STILL not sure if it was because I had to 'overload' him X times, or do X damage while he was overloaded. I just kept kiting, standing on beacons and then eventually I just won.

I don't want to come across as too negative here, I just binged through these 11 missions in a single sitting (and still going!) so obviously it's great overall. Just some things that kind of annoyed me in the recent missions. Didn't have any such issues with the first 7 or so.

Last edited by Kirlock: Jun 27, 2018

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DudkiSC2
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#111 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jun 28, 2018
In reply to Kirlock:

Thanks for playing. I can definitely understand where you're coming from. One of the things I like doing when developing missions in Annihilation is experiment, and try to see how many different types of gameplay scenarios I can fit into one story. I have a lot of ideas, and as a result, I try out a lot of different things that don't always work well for some people.

Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy what's to come. There's quite a bit more experimental gameplay scenarios, just a heads up. But I hope they'll do well with you. :)

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Kirlock
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#112 Kirlock

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Posted Jun 28, 2018
In reply to DudkiSC2:

I mean, I'm holding you to the same standards as I would any video game developer (such as blizzard or someone) so that already tell you something about how good the maps is. If the player gets punished for doing what they would naturally want to do, that's generally a design mistake.

Like, why not make the war pig a detector just to show his 'aggro' range? It wouldn't change the puzzle, you aren't cloaked anyways, but it's a quality of life improvement. I enjoyed every other part of that mission immensely, even when I got stuck a few times (such as that one computer near the security guard, just assumed there wasn't enough space to hide next to the computer so i spent forever trying other things out).

Oh, or on the first malrick fight with khadruos and voradin. The placement of the beacons for voradin meant that half the time when he ported over to one, if I didn't move him immediately (if I went to micro khaduros for a few secs) and came back to move him.. he would then teleport back to the other side because more of his model was on the back side of the beacon. If you widen the small choke point setup at the beacons, so you can move in all 4 directions 'off' the beacon before continuing along to the generators, that would remove that small issue. Currently, you can only move in one direction from the beacon. ex: If you are on the left one, you move SW to get off it. If you are on the right one, you move NE.

To contrast my nitpicks, do you have a donation page setup? I would like to throw a few bucks your way, it's obvious you've put a lot of work into these.

Last edited by Kirlock: Jun 28, 2018

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DudkiSC2
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#117 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jun 29, 2018
In reply to Kirlock:

I actually really like the suggestion of making him a detector and showing his range. That is simply something that never crossed my mind. The initial design choice was to make it kind of a trial and error type of scenario, so people would fail initially and from those fails, learn his approximate range, but it is really hard to judge even by doing that, just because of the way the terrain is setup in the different locations.

I do not have a donation page setup. I really appreciate that you would be willing to donate, but it's just not something I'm doing for this project. Thanks, though!

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PowercoreX64
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#108 PowercoreX64

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Posted Jun 26, 2018
Hello, Dudki. I recently played mission 22, and I enjoyed it very much. There were a few things I think you should look at.

During the first cinematic, Khaduros says: "the the nexus point." This is one of few grammar related issues I discovered.

When the CPG and Daggerfang were assaulting the R.S.S.I fortress, they went idle and didn't move. Eventually, there was at least 600 worth of supply just standing in the fortress. I don't know if this was intended or not, but I found it quite odd.

During the mineral gathering section, my heroes were invulnerable. I would receive alerts that they were under attack, but they wouldn't take any damage.

When Crowley's ship is crashing, there is already another ship crashed on the ground before the one descending gets there .

When Reeves was talking about the minerals and the camera pans to a mineral node, my screen when brown. I think that has something to do with the player's visibility and revealers.

Other than that, I had a great time playing the mission and see our protagonists fight as one.
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DudkiSC2
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#109 DudkiSC2

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Posted Jun 26, 2018
In reply to PowercoreX64:

Thanks for the feedback. I just checked the map about the invulnerability of your heroes, and they are in fact Invulnerable. It's funny how I missed that.

I wasn't able to replicate the Daggerfang and CPG bugging out in all of the playtests I've done. I'm not quite sure what happened there, unfortunately. I'm glad you were still able to complete the section, though.

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brendon51989744
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#104 brendon51989744

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Posted Mar 24, 2018
Cant get it to work properly. Windows 10. I opened the sc2 editor from blizzard app sc2 tab. Opened the first map file. Once it loaded there was a noise playing(zerg type). Opened using the green test icon in the top right corner. Loaded but had the zerg sound playing in background, minimized it closed the edittor, got to the end of the mission and instead of going in the cave and it saying victory I was then back out to the base with all units at command center, another boss spawned beat him and it just sat there. Sorry for the paragraph but do you know what I did wrong lol. Thanks!

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DudkiSC2
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#105 DudkiSC2

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Posted Mar 25, 2018
In reply to brendon51989744:

That seems to be a very strange bug. The game was definitely supposed to end in victory after that cinematic after beating the boss. Looking in the map itself, doesn't seem like anything is wrong. Some triggers must have just bugged out for you.

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Free4Days
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#103 Free4Days

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Posted Jan 29, 2018
TELL THEM THAT STARRICK SENT YOU STRAIGHT TO HELL

Top 10 Anime betrayals

Last edited by Free4Days: Jan 29, 2018

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Archangelos
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#98 Archangelos

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Posted Dec 22, 2017
Mission 21 is fun, but 3 boss fights in one campaign does get tiring.

For the first boss fight, could you give a hint that only grenades can harm the boss, and that normal attacks and snipe don't work at all? I couldn't even kill him when he was red with my normal attacks.

I played on "hard," but it felt like brutal at times. The split map mechanic was good, but in the stealth section, I felt I was babysitting the non-ghost hero (can't remember his name), who contributed absolutely nothing to that section but needed to be hidden away so that no one would see him. Then I only need to babysit him a while after Reeves saw Rhik/Cowley through the window., and suddenly he was teleported to where Reeves was.

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Highlord_Alarak
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#99 Highlord_Alarak

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Posted Jan 5, 2018
In reply to Archangelos:

I think u missread the reduced dmg, the boss takes 60% less dmg when not cloaked. Ferring can be usefull to snipe enemys(with his greande) after they have been stunned by reeves. In the New version they have hold fire aswell.

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Archangelos
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#100 Archangelos

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Posted Jan 10, 2018
In reply to Highlord_Alarak:

I was talking about Arrow in the first boss fight, as his steady shot deals zero damage when the enemy spector hero is decloaked. The only damage you can deal is with grenades when you guess correctly the spot he is at while cloaked. If you are supposed to kill the 1st boss with grenades only, why not disable the steady shot during that fight?

This is a split map; Reeves and Ferring are on the "stealth portion" where Ferring is a liability that entire section.

Unless of course Dudkhi has changed the map since I played it.

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