Custom Campaign Audience

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GnaReffotsirk
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Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

So, it's been quite some time, and not much activity with respect to this. I see a lot of maps but not much on a story-driven campaign.

Is there an audience ripe for campaigns? What's the demand for Campaigns? High? Low? Nil?

Is it worth it to work out a campaign for the purpose of the said audience?

And, what's the current level of expectation, feature-wise, for campaigns?
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by IskatuMesk »

Always work on something for yourself first. Most people in sc2 are stuck to the whole castlefight/moba thing and don't even know that campaigns can be created for games. Doesn't help that sc2 doesn't have a release platform for campaigns and they go out of their way to restrict valuable campaign triggers.

As far as expectations would go, if you're making a B&D campaign (please do, RPG campaigns are a dime a hundred), make sure the AI defends itself. The Blizzard campaign AI doesn't actually possess the functions to do so. That's why wol/hots are faceroll easy. I have a library or two Jademus made for me that helps inject these functions back into the AI, but I don't know if they work with the current version of sc2, so it might be best to ask him.

Aim for high skill level. The game is old now. All the bads have quit by now for the next call of doge. Go for teamplay, FFA, multi-base, large maps. Every B&D campaign is a 1v1 crawl on a small map with some dumb gimmick like lava or something tossed in. With good computer AI structure, you should never need any gimmicks. Think of terrain and custom units/structures as your way to manipulate the gameflow to introduce special mechanics indirectly. Avoid arbitrary menial things, like mules and inject larva. I'd go as far to say as just scrap all existing vanilla races and start from scratch but I doubt many people are willing to build entire new worlds for a campaign anymore.

Whichever route you decide to go, good luck!

The value of something can only be determined by the value you yourself place into it.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by tf- »

Interest seems to have gone down a bit, but mostly due to dissapointment over a lack of completed campaigns... there's not a lack of demand or anything, projects that show up on sc2mapster are usually met with lots of enthusiasm even if they are obvious long shots.
I reckon a complete full-size campaign would have quite a bit of success, judging by the positive reception of smaller campaigns.. like say Subjection which is a decent effort, in fact that campaign is what I would look at the most to figure out how fans feel about custom campaigns, it's the only one to get an arcade highlight after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_IEGhZdeFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfRPq_PTAQI arcade highlight

Player expectations for the campaign I'm not sure, seems like anything goes, certainly it's fine to still make linear campaigns with little/no choices like you had in Starcraft 1 as nobody really criticizes that aspect when they're released, though I bet it would give you an extra edge to have some element of choice especially since banks make it so easy now.

People are starved enough for campaigns that you can get away with quite plain missions, not saying you should do that of course, and everyone thought WoL was just about brilliant gameplay-wise (eh..), so it can't be that hard to muster the needed features.
It's just that very few have the endurance for the marathon effort that is making a campaign, and Blizzard's patches annihilate any features that are too interesting, like periodic meteor showers wiping out all complex lifeforms.

I agree with Mesk on the build&destroy thing, a campaign all about hero units kicking ass is kind of an easy way out. (..HOTS?)
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by IskatuMesk »

Honestly if I ever considered making a campaign I would have a hacked exe that disabled online (and re-enabled those restricted triggers) to freeze the game version and release that with the project if I decided to make it public. Nothing I would release would go on battle.net, though (not only because of size but because of censorship and such).

Extras like voice acting are pretty easy to do. Get something completed and I might be able to help you out with it.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

I see. Hmm..
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by trondor »

I'd say if you even just complete a small story-driven campaign then your miles ahead of most of us. The only completed campaigns I know of is Subjection and Crimson Moon.

If I where to make a serious effort I think I would limit the number of maps to max 5, most likely 3-4, as making maps in Starcraft2 takes alot more time and effort then SC1/WC3. Personally I would be exhausted by the workload if it were any longer.

What I expect from a quality campaign is detailed terrain, fun and interesting gameplay and an immersive story. As an example, I thought Crimson Moon nailed it on terrain and gameplay. Those met my standards.

With so few completed campaigns in the community the need for bells and whistles aren't that high. Just finishing a campaign would make it stand out.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

Thanks for that. Yes it takes a while because I think there's a lot more we could do with the editor, and also we want more added into our maps.

Say for example when I had to create functions to show ships dropping off units, and give those bunker and barracks abilities, etc.

My only problem is with the loading time. Man does it take ages to test a map.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by IskatuMesk »

Yeah. Their "streaming" patch doubled the load time on my end for test map from the editor.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

man, so it is this online thing..
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by tf- »

It's true, the game does some file checksum check with battlenet that makes file modifications impossible. The only way to alleviate it a little is to keep the editor and the game running side by side at all times so everything's cached... but then you might not be able to run anything else very well, I sure can't on my old ass PC.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

So does this mean the editor is a persistently online thing? That we cannot create maps if it cannot do the checksum thing?
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by tf- »

No, that's just the game. The editor is much more lenient, it only wants to connect to battlenet every 2-3 weeks or so, otherwise you can't use it.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

Aha! Man, I'm living on borrowed wi-fi so... hehehe

Wow. It's really nice to be painting terrain again.

Oh, btw, how do you fix the cliff thing where it looks like cliffs are not being rendered properly in the editor. There's like earth/soil bleeding down the sides.

I could swear there was an option to tick and this thing would go away. Terribly sorry, but might as well ask while were in the talk.

edit: Got it. It's show Hidden cells in the view / terrain menu..
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by OutsiderXE »

Don't know if you know, but the loading time is much faster when you don't exit a loaded map. Alt-tab to the editor, make your changes, press test-map again => much faster loading times.
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Re: Custom Campaign Audience

Post by IskatuMesk »

Nope, I did not know that. I'm totally going to have to try that sometime.
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