Contest's Campaigns

(June 6th, 2009 - June 15th, 2009) Completed: July 31st, 2009
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mAc Chaos
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by mAc Chaos »

The Oracle wrote: @ all who are upset about my campaign release delays:

To say I misjudged the timeframes required to make the maps, trigger them, create the voice fx, etc. is an understatement.  And I happily forfeit my placing in this contest.  Please stop bothering Lavarinth about it. 

In terms of the last map, I suppose it does not matter anymore whether or not I finish it but I do hope that you all enjoyed the first three and I'll take feedback I've received to date into consideration for modifying certain parts to further polish them off.

CC rocks and I look forward to seeing what everyone does in the next contest and StarCraft 2!

You should finish it anyway.  You don't need the contest to complete a project.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by Dem0nS1ayer »

Dem0nS1ayer wrote: Wait, don't play mine just yet.  I realized that there's a huge problem in the last mission.  Please use this version instead.  I'll take whatever penalty you give me for this super late update, but this bug completely kills the map.

http://www.filefront.com/14294497/TR05.scx
Never mind, I'm going to leave my campaign as it is for the judges.  If anyone else wants to play this campaign, though, please download that updated map.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by Lavarinth »

We downloaded the campaigns when they were released as the only option to play "fixed" campaigns is to accept penalty on delays, which I'm sure you would prefer to avoid.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by thebrowncloud »

Lavarinth wrote: We downloaded the campaigns when they were released as the only option to play "fixed" campaigns is to accept penalty on delays, which I'm sure you would prefer to avoid.
Hey Lav, when does Dread start his judging? Are we gonna receive reports like Ricky is doing? I wanna know if I got anything wrong in our campaign.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by tipereth »

I think Lav/Dread are busy with Blizzcon right now.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by Lavarinth »

Dread and I have returned from BlizzCon and testing will recommence soon.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

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Re: Contest's Campaigns

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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by thebrowncloud »

What is the pool of media looking like for the lore judging? I'm guessing that it is the games, official bonus campaigns/missions, novels, short stories, graphic novels, and comics that were released before the deadline. Am I right?
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

thebrowncloud wrote: What is the pool of media looking like for the lore judging? I'm guessing that it is the games, official bonus campaigns/missions, novels, short stories, graphic novels, and comics that were released before the deadline. Am I right?
I am not sure about Lavarinth's and Dread's points of view but personally I would only consider Starcraft, Brood War and Starcraft 2's lore as the real lore. In addition, since Starcraft 2's lore can still change over time, I would only consider established Starcraft 2 lore before the contest's start in terms of validity vs each campaign's lore.

Note : To me, Starcraft doesn't include the Nintendo 64's extended story (especially about Alexei). However, I wouldn't penalize if Alexei is "back from the death" as long there is at least something mentioned that he died but came back somehow or was presumed dead but isn't in reality.

All the rest from the various other media would be pretty much considered canon (as in lore that I don't count) in my book.

This is especially when some of them have some lore conflicts and such in addition that not everyone would be interested to spend quite a bit of money to read every of those side stories.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by thebrowncloud »

Ricky_Honejasi wrote:
thebrowncloud wrote: What is the pool of media looking like for the lore judging? I'm guessing that it is the games, official bonus campaigns/missions, novels, short stories, graphic novels, and comics that were released before the deadline. Am I right?
I am not sure about Lavarinth's and Dread's points of view but personally I would only consider Starcraft, Brood War and Starcraft 2's lore as the real lore. In addition, since Starcraft 2's lore can still change over time, I would only consider established Starcraft 2 lore before the contest's start in terms of validity vs each campaign's lore.

Note : To me, Starcraft doesn't include the Nintendo 64's extended story (especially about Alexei). However, I wouldn't penalize if Alexei is "back from the death" as long there is at least something mentioned that he died but came back somehow or was presumed dead but isn't in reality.

All the rest from the various other media would be pretty much considered canon (as in lore that I don't count) in my book.

This is especially when some of them have some lore conflicts and such in addition that not everyone would be interested to spend quite a bit of money to read every of those side stories.
Everyone is entitled to their own preference of doing things, but lore is lore. Anything on the wiki (and therefore every piece of lore) should be taken into account on the judging. Some of it (actually, the majority of it now) takes place during the four year period between 2501 and 2505, so to completely ignore that and start from scratch really gives no guidelines to people as to what is really going on and therefore everyone's story is equally as plausible as the next as long as they payed attention to their SC2 info and actually played SC vanilla and BW.

To be honest, I think people overreact with some of the "errors" and retcons in the lore. Most of them are very miniscule and have pretty much nothing to do with how the universe will soon unfold. Queen of Blades especially gets frowned upon for its vast differences from Episode II. Yes, it has differences, but the truth of how the universe is is pretty easy to figure out. Here are a few examples from that book:

Q: Was Artanis really an executor? What happened to him being a praetor?
A: Yes, it was retconned that he was the Executor for Episode III and at least AN executor (not necessarily the PC) during the events of Brood War. It is unclear if he became a praetor temporarily after that, but it is unlikely because the Hierarchy was formed and he was elected Hierarch.

Q: Were Jim Raynor and the Raiders the first terrans to make it to Char and thus give it its name?
A: No. Char was a vital planet during the Guild Wars and was a mining colony prior to being lost to the zerg.

Q: Which series of events on Char is the true one? The ones from Episode II or the events in Queen of Blades?
A: It doesn't matter. The same outcome was reached and half the characters involved in the events are dead. The purpose of the book was to establish how Raynor ended up allying himself with the protoss, how Tassadar overcame his prejudices towards the dark templar, and how Kerrigan felt about Raynor so shortly after her transformation (basically, the relationships between characters).

I'm sorry if I seem like I'm calling you out, Ricky, because that is not my intent. I just think that people not wanting to read the books because they present retcons or slight variations/errors is a silly excuse. Retcons are official, so you're gonna have to live with them. The errors and variations are on the most miniscule of things that it really won't affect the way you see the universe for worse. And if people simply don't want to spend the money, read the wiki article about it. Take it from me; I've read all the books, graphic novels, short stories, and comic issues to date as well as the wiki articles about them. They are all correct.

And the Alexei "back from the dead" thing is present in more than just that map in SC64. It was a main element of the missions surrounding the Kimeran Pirates: Deception and Mercnearies II. Both of these missions were official maps of the month from Blizzard and the events that transpired (including the existence of Taldarin in Resurrection IV, the mission from SC64) have been confirmed as canon by Chris Metzen.

However, you are right to doubt the legitimacy of the variations in SC64. I, myself, have never played it all the way through (rented it, hated it, never bought it) so I don't know what all was changed, but Metzen has said that the game is "semi-canonical" and will only take a few pieces from it for the actual storyline. The Stukov mission, specifically, has been stated as canon, though.

Sorry. Got a bit off-topic. I had a loregasm.  :-\
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Sun Aug 30, 2009 10:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote: Just as a point of reference, tbc, the second place prize is the complete sc novels.  If every contestant is expected to have already read every sc novel, then wouldn't that render 1/3rd of the prizes completely moot?  I mean, yeah there's the wiki, but who wants to read the entire wiki just for a contest :P
Partially true. You get the "novel trilogy" which I assume is the first three. There are seven others plus the graphic novels, etc. Nevertheless, that is why Tim and I would much rather get third prize instead of second because we both have those three.

But my main point is that if we didn't need to consider the other medias, then there basically is no lore judging as long as no one does anything stupid. I'd be willing to bet that a lot of the campaigns on this site could have been contributed to this contest and fit the lore requirements if it was like that. Imo, the beauty of the StarCraft universe is that you can't just throw anything in it like WarCraft and have it make sense (my apologies to the fans of WC lore). Nothing in StarCraft is magical. It's all a "science" and has an explanation to why it is the way it is (besides Khaydarin crystals; those legitimately can do anything the writer wants them to). If you know your lore, you will realize that every aspect of the SC universe has boundaries. From the timeline to the planets to the very capabilities of each race; not everything is possible. Under the contest page, it says "'Blizzard quality' should be of your highest priority," under TEXT, but that should be the aim for every aspect.

I apologize for my ranting. Perhaps I am just impatient because the only thing I see in any of the project threads are the bug reports. The lore is clearly what Tim and I focused on the most. The idea of us having been able to toss in any story and the only real challenge being triggers makes it seem like we wasted our time. :-\
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Mon Aug 31, 2009 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by Legion »

Krazy wrote:
thebrowncloud wrote: The idea of us having been able to toss in any story and the only real challenge being triggers makes it seem like we wasted our time. :-\


Triggers, map functionality, map beauty, professionalism, and text (including story). 

A lot of people put a lot of time into one element that isn't directly related to the scoring... something like half the submissions had mods, something like half had custom voice work.  These things can take as much time as any given whole category, but they are instead bundled into "Professionalism".  Unfortunately, being a contest, it is not tailor made to fit any one contestant's strengths.  Ultimately, if you're not doing it for fun, then you probably were wasting your time, considering the last time I checked you can buy SC2 beta keys on ebay for like 50 bucks a piece and the board game for 50. 

If you enjoy a job at pizza hut, you could probably make that much in a week, let alone 2 months, and have more fun doing it. 
True, but what tbc is addressing is an (unexpected) change of attitude regarding the importance of the 'lore' aspect.

The contest was about campaigns taking place between SC and SC2. It's called the "four years between contest". So that automatically makes lore THE most important aspect of the contest. It's not the 'boss-fight' contest. It's not the 'voice-over' contest. It's not even 'all three-races all get their own campaign' contest. It's the 'four years between' contest.

Lore isn't just a part of it, it's the main ingredient. You can't afford to produce something that disregards lore if you want to win. Cheapest way to get up-to-date is read the wiki. Sure, it takes time, but you want to win, right?

So what I'm saying is, if a story conflicts with official SC lore, I'd say that disqualifies them. Don't get me wrong, the best ones out there may well be the ones disregarding lore, but if you want to give the people that DO stick to the guidelines of this particular contest a fair chance, you can't ignore that story is just as important as functionality.
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Aug 31, 2009 6:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Contest's Campaigns

Post by tipereth »

I made all my shit happen out in the boonies specifically to avoid you crazy lore people, and then I realized I'd still missed stuff so I had to go back and throw in explanations. I'm sure someone will still complain about something anyway.
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