Playing SC2 Campaigns

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Krazy
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Playing SC2 Campaigns

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Church
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by Church »

Ashes of Freedom was awesome, too bad it was never finished.

I've seen good things about the SC1 to SC2 remakes, and I've been planning on playing Crimson Moon. And... I guess a lot of people liked Subjection?
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by trondor »

Crimson was nice, Amber Sun even better. Ashes of Freedom was great as well.

I've been working on some missions too. I am the maker of the BioTech campaign. It's not really a proper campaign as there are no developed storyline, but that's not my area of interest anyway.

Have anyone here made some campaigns? This hub was known for quality projects during starcraft1.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

You guys have any review on these campaigns?
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IskatuMesk
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by IskatuMesk »

trondor wrote:I've been working on some missions too. I am the maker of the BioTech campaign. It's not really a proper campaign as there are no developed storyline, but that's not my area of interest anyway.
Story is really easy to slap together as long as you avoid silly cliches like love stories and dark voices. But they don't need to be intricate; most games get away without having any real story and turn out good (e.g. a lot of vintage console games). Good dialogue is generally more important for a campaign if you want to pursue a writing route.
Have anyone here made some campaigns? This hub was known for quality projects during starcraft1.
I don't know of anyone in staff that is actively in a project of that scale. I myself put together some functional prototype maps back in early 2012 but never went any further than that and probably won't.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by tf- »

I've got a huge project on the backburner that I might make a thread for.. I'm just disillusioned because it's a really large project started in late 2010 and Blizzard uses their patches to break absolutely everything in it about....every 6 months or so, so it would be less of an announcement than 'here's some garbage that might be salvageable'.

To get an idea of the scale of things, there's about 30 missions and the campaign is so non-linear you can leave a mission any time you want to regroup and killed enemy units/bases stay dead, any remaining objectives can be completed when you return if they weren't urgent things etc - some missions even have respawning resources/things so they feel like real places you want to remember and keep tabs on. Of course all this stuff hurts the "story" which is why - even though it's there - I haven't focused on making it very deep or rely on any characters, I'd rather have interesting setpieces with interesting stuff to do.

There's also a massive unit/upgrade research tree with multiple choices for everything, an AI that chooses its units and upgrades depending on your own unit composition, all of the campaign's toughest to implement features are working even with Blizzard's relentless patching efforts, but as much as I want it released it's not looking too good for this campaign, me starting an UDK shmup looking for some more clear returns on my efforts doesn't help either.
Might post some pics later :huwhaa:
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by IskatuMesk »

Aye, those patches. 1.5 just casually deleting everything that you need to have in those required directories. A+. Have an external backup plan, amigos, campaign or not.

Non-linear stuff is definitely way harder to make work than linear stuff. I was planning to stick to the basics. A campaign in a few segments, each segment consisting of 3 chapters that contains 6-8 missions. Ultimately much simpler than a big non-linear campaign but still plenty of different material (and it would be a total conversion with some extra races added).

I'd be interested to see how your UDK ventures turn out. I'm trying to learn it myself for Retribution.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by tf- »

Yeah I know about Apex and actually remember the 1.5 thing back when it happened, it's funny because good build&destroy (there is room set aside for it but it's not really that inspired) and melee AI is exactly what's missing from my campaign.
I can't help you much with UDK probably since most of what I messed with is UnrealScript to create the mechanics and not the asset pipeline or stuff like that, you can see the project's state and its amazing reception here: http://forums.epicgames.com/threads/970 ... razer-quot
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by IskatuMesk »

Hey, that's looking pretty spiffy. I'm currently only at the stage where I have a test scene in. This is an old shot I posted in my model thread a while ago. I've updated the textures since then but I don't really have any textures to work with at the moment, so it's pretty basic right now.

Image

You seem to already have an understanding of a few things I'd need to know, like how to get big space fights happening. Granted, yours are in 2d and mine would be 3d, but still. Do you know how beams work (like, could you create a piercing beam that say melts away part of a target either by changing materials effected by the impact or something), or of any way to create lightning-like beams?

Well, really, there's a ton of questions I could ask on that video alone but yeah. Since my project is a movie and will be dumped frames, I'm willing to take inefficient methods out, and hoping to avoid too much scriptwork because I have a lot to learn as it is (though I supposed it's inevitable I'll get into it one way or another).

Strange about the reception really. Someone offered to help answer some UDK questions when I reached that stage in my project a while back, but he quickly vanished from existence afterwards and now that I need him, whelp. I'm used to that kind of thing, really. I had hoped such a huge community would be different.

If you get into asset pipelines, I might be able to send you some models to experiment with.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by tf- »

Basically you'll need to use Matinee to create those sequences, it's kind of time-consuming to use but should be intuitive enough, the same way you have a "movement track" for objects you can have a track for changing particle parameters, beams are just particle systems with vector parameters like 'beam strength', 'beam target point' and so on. You'll need to have a look in the Cascade particle editor, just try to edit any beam in the UDK assets like the gun beams.
Materials also have tracks so you can change material parameters easily, like you have a material that combines a base texture with a hole/damage texture, and you attach a parameter to the alpha of the hole texture that's set to 0 and use the material parameter track to change it up to 1 when you want the hole to appear.
Far as I can tell you can't avoid scriptwork for beams though, there's no easy way to just tell the beam to use a dynamic vector as the target from Matinee, you gotta make two objects from Unrealscript that always have a beam between them, then with Matinee you use a movement track to move the beam objects around as a way to move the beam, and a particle parameter track to change the beam strength and make it visible/invisible.

You can throw me a PM with other questions, I'm not really in-depth with Matinee stuff though, there's some decent tutorials on youtube for that.
And yeah UDK forums are decent but there's not too much enthusiasm except for completed projects, FPSs or really nice looking landscapes.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by IskatuMesk »

Once I feel better and get a bit further with my experiments I probably will PM you. You are the closest thing I think I'll ever get to a tutor, haha.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by trondor »

IskatuMesk wrote:
Story is really easy to slap together as long as you avoid silly cliches like love stories and dark voices. But they don't need to be intricate; most games get away without having any real story and turn out good (e.g. a lot of vintage console games). Good dialogue is generally more important for a campaign if you want to pursue a writing route.

I could not write well if my life depended on it. :P

I had to squeeze my brain real hard to get dialogues working in my campaign. I got feedback that my writings could be painfully cheezy, and that it broke immersion and only distracted the player from the gameplay.

My solution has been to only add enough background story to justify the mission objectives, and to tell as little as possible.

I tried to add some story and dialogue in this mission though, but it still is only somewhat acceptable.
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Re: Playing SC2 Campaigns

Post by GnaReffotsirk »

Story is good. If you're cheezy you have to go overboard with it, until you find your sweet spot. Everyone has their style. The core of story is plot. You protagonist, antagonist.

Situation stories are easy. There must be a problem, and a threat if it's not brought to equity. From there you can make goals for your characters.

You just need to show the player what's going on, and how the characters try to solve it, the obstacles pressed down on them, cause and effect without derailing.

It's like trying to hitch a ride when late for school. Make the events irreversible and you're golden.
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