Redesigning Starcraft [Redux]

Fey
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Redesigning Starcraft [Redux]

Post by Fey »

Hey there, guys. Been modding games as a hobby for a while now, did some work on the original Starcraft campaign, thought I'd share.

So far, I've just released the Terran campaign. If you've played these maps before, the current update has done some bugfixing and seen Terran 12 finished. Here are the details:
Spoiler
Minor changes. You begin with a few less forces, you can build a Barracks, and you must protect your base from the Zerglings that occasionally come for you in order to beat the map.
Spoiler
Minor changes. You must train a couple more Marines to win. Zerglings will occasionally run for you, and eventually Hydralisks too. There are also Zerg forces attacking your initial Command Center when you get there. Firebats and Academies are available as well.
Spoiler
Major changes. The map has been made non-linear and an aggressive AI opponent has been added. Zerglings will run into you in swarms if you approach them. A Zerg Queen supports the area around the Infested Command Center.

Vultures and Ion Thrusters have been added to compensate for the open map, aggressive Zerglings and near-end defenses.
Spoiler
Major changes. Extremely aggressive AI. Zerg forces are scripted to attack you at various locations within their own base, and if left unprovoked they will build additional production and send more units at you. The Terran base has received minor aesthetic changes.

Unclaimed mineral-only and gas-only expansions have been added within the Zerg territory to aid in an attack. Goliaths may be built. Vehicles may be upgraded. Destroying the enemy base or defending your own within the 30 minute timer are both viable options.
Spoiler
Minor changes. Enemy units will rush at you if you approach them, subtly adding more danger to the encounters on this map since enemy units will attack sooner and attack together. A couple of enemy Marines have been added here or there.
Spoiler
Moderate changes. Enemy AI will fly buildings in and establish a base around your initial position. Extra ramps have been added to make the map a little less linear. Additional expansions are available for the taking, and the enemy AI has been boosted to Insane, although it has historically glitched out on this map. Hopefully it works for you!
Spoiler
Moderate changes. The Zerg will clobber you if you try to move out from Norad II, but you have more to defend with over there. A couple of heroic Goliaths and Firebats assist your defense, along with several SCVs.

Kerrigan assists Raynor on this map. You may build Terran Tanks, but they lack the Siege upgrade. Flexible Zerg forces will navigate around their base to meet you where you strike. A couple of Ultralisks are included in the Zerg defense forces, so have fun with that.

Level 2 upgrades become available on this map.
Spoiler
This old map was one of the two Terran maps Blizzard never finished. It's got voice acting and other stuff so I finished it.

You begin with Duke in a Siege Tank and Raynor in a Vulture, along with six Marines and two SCVs.

The first phase of this map involves saving four Terran bases from destruction. When you approach any Terran base, it will fall under attack by the Zerg. Successfully defending any base will provide you access to whatever structures, workers, or resources are still left. Losing any base will mean you lose the opportunity for those units and stuff, and losing all four bases means mission failed.

Building a Command Center or inheriting one from the southernmost Terran base will initialize the Zerg AIs. You may save the bases in any order you'd like; even after you get a Command Center the scripted sequences will still play out. Once you save all four bases and kill enough Zerg, or after the Zerg Hive on the center island has been killed, the next part of the map begins.

Duke will say that there are way too many Zerg to handle coming your way, and a massive wave of Zerg will show up to ruin your day. These Zerg are easiest to hold off across the bridge at the southernmost base, but unlike previous versions of the map, it is possible to progress by holding them off elsewhere, however difficult this may be. Eventually, some Protoss will show up, annihilate the southeastern Zerg base and assist you in clearing Zerg from your starting island, and they'll leave the other two islands to you.

I would like to make the Protoss assist you in an attack, but for some reason the AI derps out and doesn't like to help. Sorry! If anyone knows how this might be fixed, I'd really appreciate some help with this one.

I worked hard on this map, so I hope you enjoy it.
Spoiler
Major changes. The enemy AI is significantly more aggressive. They will establish most of their structures in a different location as well. Several brutal scripted attacks will surprise you as you progress through this mission. Brown enemy forces will send different unit compositions depending on which structures you decide to build first, and the infamous Wraith attack will do varying damage depending on how many SCVs you've trained.

The Norad II wreckage is within the SK base. Keeping the repair crew alive, a fairly simple task, will ensure that Norad II becomes available ten minutes into the battle. Raynor is also on the field to assist you. Once the Emitter is taken to the Beacon, a short King-of-the-Hill segment begins where you must hold that location for a few minutes.

Level 3 upgrades are available on this map.
Spoiler
Major changes. Several new pathways have been opened to reduce map linearity and increase potential avenues of attack for the enemy AI. Enemy AIs have been changed to Insane and the brown AI will use a Nuke or two against you. You begin with Raynor and Kerrigan in the bottom right, but Duke and the Alpha Squadron as an allied AI will show up later in the top left.

Your starting area is occupied by some enemy troops, but you'll find more rescuable goodies waiting for you there. Mostly Supply Depots. Once you have taken command of Duke, additional rescuable goodies are available not far from Alpha Squadron's base. Bringing Duke over to them will make him comment on how they were left behind, and some Dropships with reinforcements, including SCVs, will show up.

Brown bunkers have been spread around their base rather than formed up bordering your initial starting position in case you want to try and attack from Duke's position instead. Minor scripted attacks will intercept your forces as you press into enemy territory.

The ending dialogue has been removed since it instead appears on T10.
Spoiler
This old map was one of the two Terran maps Blizzard never finished. It's got voice acting and other stuff so I finished it.

You begin with Raynor and Kerrigan along with an escort of Marines and Siege Tanks. Your goal is to destroy all the Confederate Factories and Starports, which are all marked with Beacons. Moving Kerrigan over a Beacon will set a bomb that, after five seconds, destroys the marked structures and anything or anyone nearby. You may also destroy them traditionally, though this is a little harder.

Alpha Squadron will, once again, show up and build up to assist you on this map. While they cause commotion at all the Confederate bases, it'll be up to you to sneak in and take out the designated targets. You gain access to a couple of Nuclear Missile Silos and a Comsat Station while Alpha Squadron claims the rest of the base. And, additional Marines and Ghosts will show up to bolster your forces.

There are no normal ways to increase your standing forces after this point. You may exchange Marines for Goliaths at the center of the map and acquire another SCV there as well. Otherwise, the only reinforcements you'll receive come after taking out all the designated targets at one side's base. Each base has two possible reinforcements combinations to give you, so results may vary if you replay the map.

This was fun to put together, but didn't require quite as much work as T7. I hope you enjoy it!
Spoiler
Moderate changes. Protoss AI has been split in two and will send some scripted attacks your way, including a Reaver drop with randomized Shuttles, one of which is not a hallucination. The Zerg will also send a scripted attack here or there. Protoss defenders will react to your presence by meeting your attacking forces.

To compensate for initial difficulty, two Bunkers and two Factories along with a few enhanced units bolster your starting position.
Spoiler
Major changes. On this unique map, you must commandeer Dominion assets and make your way to the Ion Cannon with limited forces. You begin with 4 Insurgents, 6 Marines, and Raynor. Only Supply Depots, Missile Turrets, and Bunkers are available for construction.

Scattered throughout the map are 12 Wraiths, 6 Goliaths, 3 Siege Tanks, 3 Ghosts, 24 Marines, 8 SCVs, and 1 Science Vessel which can all be captured. You may use either Terran Insurgents, which are civilian units you'll find spread throughout the map, or Terran Marines. Walking Insurgents or Marines over the Beacons for the Wraiths, Goliaths, Siege Tanks, or Science Vessel will exchange the unit for the vehicle, so the use of Insurgents is obviously preferable.

There are structures that can be captured scattered around the map as well. Capturable automated defenses like Missile Turrets will detect for nearby Dominion forces and fire on your units until captured. The parked Science Vessel will detect as well. All Beacons marking capturable vehicles, all resource deposits, and all capturable structures will be revealed on the map from the very start.

Once all Beacons have been cleared, two Terran Dropships and a Terran Starport will become available and you may finish the map. You will have a maximum of 8,000 Minerals and 4,000 Vespene to work with, which can only be gained by pillaging marked Dominion Supply Depots. Good luck.
Download Redesigned Terran Campaign: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qvQ2a ... _VSTwHHVVo

I'll be working on the Zerg campaign and releasing the maps individually until I've got a full campaign to post. In the meantime, I hope y'all like what I did with the Terran campaign. Have fun!
Last edited by Fey on Sun Mar 04, 2018 4:23 am, edited 8 times in total.
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by IskatuMesk »

Sounds like many of your changes are geared towards making the AI more aggressive in the B&D maps. That's always great to see. AI is such a huge part of mission design and so few people really invest energy into making it work that load.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Revolta »

You should publish all of your changes, it looks like a 'hard' difficulty of the original project which i'm sure some people are interested in
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Andrea Rosa »

Intriguing, to say the least. I'm especially curious about the dynamic involving Tassadar in "Homeland", but if I were in you I wouldn't make the Terran force a computer ally in the final Protoss mission. You should definitely release the whole thing, I would play it for sure.
Fey
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Fey »

I do plan on releasing the whole thing! And I'm glad to see my post finally went through. :D I was actually looking for a little bit of feedback on what y'all thought of the single mission I did release, though. Terran 07: Biting the Bullet.

Did any of you guys give it a try?

Also, I've been trying to explore ways to improve the variation and difficulty of the AI. Is there some commonly-liked method done by modders for improving the AI, or... what? Is there some way I could design my own AI?

Thank you so much for your replies! It's so good to finally be sharing my hobby. :)
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by IskatuMesk »

For a campaign you'll probably want to use pyAI. That'll be a big thing for me to cover in one post, though (particularly since I am not familiar with PyAI, only the older SCAIEdit and I haven't touched it for 7 years). There are limitations to what you can do with the AI, e.g. you can't have any micro or spell usage, but you can change their build orders and get them to attack with different/more stuff.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Comfr »

I think I would like to see the campaigns have sort-of have equal amounts of missions. I think I have come up with two zerg and two protoss myself.

Inbetween "The culling" and "The Dark Templar" Is the first zerg mission I propose. The mission is effectively where you have a large zerg base, with you(Cerebrate) being the most safe in it. You will have to deal with Terran and Protoss attacks, but you are almost invulnerable. the dark templar can and will kill you any chance they can get. There is also feral zerg you will have to deal with too later on, but that'll be where the protoss and the terran are relenting for some time. You don't have access to Kerrigan for the early parts of the mission.

The second zerg mission I propose is a mission before "An eye for an eye" Is "Terran Takeover", where your main goal is to infest several command centers of a Dominion base, which will also take care of a base that they have close to the zerg. The primary reason for this is to add forces to the invasion of Aiur, and the secondary reason is to push back the Dominion. The Dominion will catch on to what you are trying to do eventually, so there is somewhat of a time limit after you start infesting command centers.

The first protoss mission i propose is "Weakness in separation". The mission would be on Aiur, just when word of Tassadar's betrayal rings out. You command a protoss base who have seperated themselves from the Khala and are for Tassadar to avoid the pressure of the Conclave and those like it. You have to deal a heavy amount of damage to the protoss, and then create a large air force, including shuttles, to escape Aiur.

The second protoss mission that I propose is "Strategic Strike", following sometime after the rebel's escape. The rebels plan to attack one of the cerebrates directly, and your objective is to kill the cerebrate. Keep in mind you do not have any Dark Templar. The aftermath is that the rebels are killed on the planet with the use of infested terrans.

This is just my suggestion, but it would certainly keep things equal, and add in some more content to this campaign.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Fey »

Thank you, Iskatu. I'll look that up.

Ah, Comfr, the reason that there are 12 (13 counting the tutorial) Terran missions is because those extra missions are fully voice-acted. I would have to figure out ways to re-use the old voice clips in very unique ways to make two whole new missions for the Zerg and the Protoss. To compensate, several Terran missions are a good deal shorter than Zerg and Protoss missions. Terran 01 is short, Terran 10 is short, and there are various bonus objectives (like Norad II in The Trump Card) that make other missions shorter.

Still, I do like some of your proposed ideas. The Zerg mission with Terran, Protoss, and Zerg opponents on it sounds kinda clusterscrewy, but the other mission with infesting Dominion command centers for the Invasion of Aiur sounds like a cool concept and like it could potentially fit. As for the first protoss mission, that wouldn't make sense lorewise because the Conclave sent you off Aiur, and it's off Aiur - past their sphere of influence - where you go, "Hey, no, I like this guy, Imma help him out." As for the killing of a cerebrate, that's best left for mission 09 - it all builds up to that point where, finally, you have free reign to defend the Protoss homeworld without interference from Conclave zealots. Also, there remains the whole voice acting problem. If a new mission is to be added, it must be complete enough in a Blizzlike manner to qualify...

The goal of my hobby isn't necessarily to create new content, it's just to add my own personal touch to a campaign I really like. I am not confident in designing my own maps, but I will happily mod existing maps. I hope that's okay. :)

Did you guys give that one map I did release a try? Terran07: Biting the Bullet? The mediafire link is at the bottom of the OP, and I would love some feedback on that in particular. It's probably the most heavy editing work I've ever done on a Starcraft map, since I really liked the concept of the mission and was very eager to work on it.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Comfr »

The main reason as to why I added in the zerg is that there was the cerebrate that died, therefore adding is some confusion there.

Also, I kinda had the protoss thing as a side thing, to show the effects of Tassadar's disobedience or something back home, and them eventually deciding to kill a cerebrate(abeit temporarly- they don't know of the cosmic energies that the dark templar and the overmind use, like remaking the cerebrates) was to not only confirm of the fact that you kinda need those skills the dark templar use in order to really kill a cerebrate for good. That is why I said that specifically.

Then again, there is the point of voice acting. It may be best to not have some of the missions in there, but on the other hand, there may be more freedom with later missions if we add in a few missions.

I can also help out, provided that I or someone else around at my home finds the copy of sc that i have...
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by MattTygore »

I can't wait for this to come out, having played the mission that was presented, I felt reinvigorated to play more SC1 missions.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Fey »

I'm doing final testing on the Terran missions and I plan on releasing those soon. :) I hit a speedbump that I don't exactly plan on continuing to try to fix because I've tried a lot of things and it's just not working, but it's only on one map: Terran05, the AI just won't operate properly. For some reason. If anyone wants to have a look at it after these are released and tell me what I did wrong... I'd appreciate it!!

I MUST ask, Matt: what did you think? Of the one that was released? I reeeeeally appreciate feedback because it helps so much in figuring out where I want to take the design process, what changes I want to make, what changes would be appropriate, what I want to fix. You know?
Fey
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Fey »

UPDATE: Please check the original post. It has been edited. Near the bottom, a link to the complete Terran campaign has been provided.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by MattTygore »

Fey wrote:I'm doing final testing on the Terran missions and I plan on releasing those soon. :) I hit a speedbump that I don't exactly plan on continuing to try to fix because I've tried a lot of things and it's just not working, but it's only on one map: Terran05, the AI just won't operate properly. For some reason. If anyone wants to have a look at it after these are released and tell me what I did wrong... I'd appreciate it!!

I MUST ask, Matt: what did you think? Of the one that was released? I reeeeeally appreciate feedback because it helps so much in figuring out where I want to take the design process, what changes I want to make, what changes would be appropriate, what I want to fix. You know?
I loved it, it kind of reminded me of how difficult SC1 was when I was a seven year old bab trying to play RTS games on the N64

the only part I was kind of "eh" on was when I got hilariously rekt by the Zerg right before the 'toss arrive (but that was probably my fault) I got passed it and the Protoss arrival was one of the coolest scenes since the Valkyrie introduction in original Broodwar.

very well made, the difficulty should remain more or less as you have set it.
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by Fey »

Damn. XD Yeah that zerg wave is nasty. I tried to make it pretty reasonable with timing - the zerg only spawn a couple of Ultralisks and many Zerglings until they push you back across the bridge, at which point hydralisks start to spawn. Once a hydralisk crosses the bridge, mutalisks spawn, and when a mutalisk passes the bridge, ultralisks spawn. It results in there being a good amount of time to pull your forces back if you expanded, and prepare.

The FIRST ultralisks to spawn (with the zerglings) are only there to prevent the player from, like, bunkering up the spawn point and mowing down zergling after zergling in an attempt to cheese the fight. They actually die when they get close to your base. When the later-on ultralisks spawn, they go right across the bridge and trigger the Protoss to save you.

I'm OVERJOYED that you thought the protoss arrival was cool! It's the first time we really get to see them in-game before skirmishes and TM11, so I tried my best to make them look unstoppable and powerful as shit. I wish I could get their AI to do more on that map, but on the bright side, they clear out an entire zerg base and save your butt from that zerg wave.

Here's a little secret: the protoss that spawn to wipe out the zerg expansion and the protoss that spawn to fight the zerg back across the bridge are actually hero units. Normally I use hero units as stationary turrets to add defenses to an AI - they won't touch hero units, so if I want a Terran Siege Tank sieged up someplace permanently, I rename Duke's siege tank to the same as the Terran Siege Tank, and I make its stats identical. This not only adds defenses to the computer AI, but also gives the computer more supply (since hero units don't take up supply) and prevents them from going nuts with an early attack (because if I place normal marines around the map, they'll just group 'em all up at the start and send 'em at you). With Terran units this is something that bothers me because the portraits are noticeably different and they have their ranks listed, but hero units like Fenix or Hunter Killers have believably non-unique, similar portraits to their unit types. On TM07, however, the hero units are renamed and set on patrol paths, but they keep heroic stats, hence being so obviously powerful.

The entire Terran campaign is released now, and I'd love any more feedback ya got for me if you decide to give it a play. Thank you so much for your interest in this campaign!
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Re: Polishing up / redesigning the original Starcraft campaign

Post by MattTygore »

I played through the whole Terran Campaign (and have it recorded and scheduled for youtube) -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wg_F9QIMck

Very good, pretty hard (which is also good) and I really liked some of the new additions and slight mission redesigns like some of the missions where Kerrigan was added or where Alpha Squadron shows up in some way after you rescue them.
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