Missing link

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DuplexBeGreat
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Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

Every time I make a new topic here, it's because I actually have a legitimate question/discussion topic for this forum, and even though I've had my account here for a good number of months, I still have that nervous "oh no they will think I am a stoopid n00b" feeling every time I want to say something. This is probably justified, given that I still am inexperienced with Starcraft campaign making and modding, and given that over the aforementioned good number of months my activity has been very, very low, as has the overall activity of the site. But I (obviously) digress; I'm not sure at all why I felt the need to explain that anyways.
The "missing link" mentioned in the title is a campaign that is very much missing from a chain of a fully-planned out storyline. To put it succinctly, why has no one tried to create something to fill-in the missing 5/6 of EDAST? Desler left very clear details on what those levels would have been like, so I don't see how it would be that hard compared to a campaign from scratch... I mean, I would think that after all these years surely a time would have come up where some campaign maker was bored and decided to try something like this. Why hasn't anyone?
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Church
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Re: Missing link

Post by Church »

I think most campaign developers prefer to make their own projects, and not delve into the lore of other developers. (Of course, there are exceptions to this, for example, The Antioch Chronicles Episode III has been resurrected two or three times. Each one failed again.)

If you'd like to head such a project, have at it. (But you should probably ask Desler if it's alright, first.) I'll back you on it, but I don't think I'll be able to help much with the actual campaign making, I'm just too busy these days.

Since you're bringing old projects back to life... maybe you should consider The Gallantry, too? ;)

And hey, don't worry about being a noob. Everyone starts there some time. Some of us had much more embarrassing introductions.
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Re: Missing link

Post by IskatuMesk »

Believe it or not, but there's actually extremely few campaign makers and there have always been extremely few since those days (I can count the ones I know on one hand). Like Jim said, they are generally much more interested in getting their own project off the ground, which tends to be hard enough without having to worry about dealing with other people's policies/lore and keeping true to their vision.

Don't worry about sounding like a "noob" either, as long as u dont wryte lyk dis I don't see why anyone would think less of you for asking any given question.
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GnaReffotsirk
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Re: Missing link

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

There's an ancient wisdom I've read about, and this not only goes for any hobby or project, but extends to everything in a person's life.

It's called something, but the idea is about "journeys" or "cycles". It was said that people do things to grow, and sometimes when reaching a certain threshold, even an unfinished project is already finished. In the sense that it has already served its purpose for the person creating or developing it.

Sometimes, a project is revisited but it becomes more mature, as new things are added into it, pouring from that person's other aspects that have developed.

So, yeah.
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Re: Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

Um... Okay, the truth is that I... Kinda... Already made the whole thing, originally just intended for my own amusement, but lately I've been thinking that's it's at least as good as, say, Palinchron Concordance, so why not share it with others, see if I have any skill at this? I completely remade the mod, taking most of the info from Desler's original mod, but improving it to make it cleaner, more accurate and realistic, nicer-looking, etc, so I also used some data from Celestial "Irruption" (such as an updated Rond portrait, rather than the awkward one from Fall From Grace). I started refurbishing the seven maps Desler already had made about a year ago, then in about a week set out to make the story described in the chapters 2-6 synopsis. That was finished about half a year ago, and every couple weeks I've been going back and updating some little part of either the mod or the maps that's been nagging at my subconscious. I followed Desler's instructions as closely as possible, deviating where I felt the gameplay or story wasn't up to standards at any given point.
Basically, all I'm looking for at this point is a go-ahead from Desler to put this big chunk of data taken from his intellectual property and put it online. I PM'd him like you suggested, but I don't think he'll respond as he hasn't been on since March...
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Church
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Re: Missing link

Post by Church »

Wow, that's... pretty impressive, there's not a lot of people with the patience for that.

Yeah, other than asking Desler, I don't know what else to do before releasing it. Hopefully he agrees, it'd be a shame for all that work to go to waste. If you aren't able to contact him, maybe Lavarinth has some kind of policy on this sort of thing?

In any case I'm very pleased to see some active campaign making around here. Any chance you'll be working on some of your own projects in the future? :]
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HelpMe
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Re: Missing link

Post by HelpMe »

Well what do you know... this is a nice surprise. I've played a bit of EDAST back in the day and didn't think much of it, to be honest -- but I'm curious as to what you've been able to come up with.

If PM proves to be ineffective you could try emailing him, I suppose. Maybe Lavarinth can provide you his contact information.

Other than that, I commend you for making such an effort. It makes me want to work on my own campaign. :]
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Re: Missing link

Post by mark_009_vn »

Maybe put up a thread and some SCREENSHOTS?

Too many people work their project in the dark and never once post a screenshot or anything... I know some people do not wanted to create expectations for a project that do not have a chance to finish, but not talking even a trace of it and leaving this site to be dead is even worse.
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Re: Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

Do you really think I should make a whole new thread rather than just using this one and changing the title?

As for screenshots, those would definitely be my first priority if I get permission for this.
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GnaReffotsirk
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Re: Missing link

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

I would make a new thread in here somewhere appropriate. If it were up to me, I'd give a go signal. Someone's vision is always welcome in my book.

Call it a revision, alternate timeline, parallel universe, what-if, whatever. :)
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Re: Missing link

Post by HelpMe »

Yeah, make a separate thread. It's not like we're getting flooded with new topics in here, anyway. ;)
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Re: Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

Got Desler's contact info from Lavarinth, having trouble getting anything sent for some reason though.
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Re: Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

Okay, update a month later: no contact with Desler is working, through any website or service. However, I have a larger problem in that my computer, after years of faithful service, randomly started lagging a few days ago, for the first time, in the middle of a normal, everyday Starcraft campaign mission. I shut it down and left it that way for three days, with only a slight improvement. I highly doubt it will be able to upload files to the internet like this (this message is being written on an iPhone). Thoughts on either issue?
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Re: Missing link

Post by mark_009_vn »

DuplexBeGreat wrote:Okay, update a month later: no contact with Desler is working, through any website or service. However, I have a larger problem in that my computer, after years of faithful service, randomly started lagging a few days ago, for the first time, in the middle of a normal, everyday Starcraft campaign mission. I shut it down and left it that way for three days, with only a slight improvement. I highly doubt it will be able to upload files to the internet like this (this message is being written on an iPhone). Thoughts on either issue?
Backup quickly. I could have lost a lot of custom contents i made if I didn't made backups on removable hard drives... For Broodwar, a USB is fine... You can come to a internet cafe if you so desire to upload stuff...
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Re: Missing link

Post by DuplexBeGreat »

ERMAGHERD UPDATE

So, it's two months later and I've finally got a new laptop (probably much more expensive than was necessary, but oh well), and once I transfer all my files onto it screenshots and uploading will possibly/60%probably commence!

Update: The laptop works and everything, but as soon as I installed Starcraft on it, without even testing to make sure Starcraft worked, I transferred all my maps and mods, and apparently overwrote a critical file in the process, as the game references a missing file and crashes (dll error?) whenever I finish a map or quit a map. This does not appear to be a compatability issue, but a Starcraft data issue, so I turn to CC again. I thought I hadn't overwritten any .dll files, so... Any idea what I might have done to cause this?

Another update: the problem was, oddly, .tmp files located in the Maps folder, about 50 of them spread out across different campaign sub-folders plus one in the main folder. Just curious, what do those do and why did they make Starcraft crash, especially given that I have no idea how they got there?

Anyway, there's still a problem: All my Firegraft data is gone, so I'm going to spend the next day or two reprogramming the 12 Firegraft mods I had, one of which was EDAST. Once that's done it'll be another few days of replaying the entire VotF saga because I missed it so much, and then I think I can start uploading the campaign.

Update four: Crap. The Firegraft data didn't magically disappear during transfer, I was just in 1.15.2 for some reason and all my Firegrafts are 1.16.1... Which means that what really happened is I just deleted the real EDAST mod and replaced it with a 1.15.2 version. So I have to fix that now, but otherwise, no problems detected currently and I should be able to upload the campaign in a few days.
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