New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

Post by Andrea Rosa »

Eredalis wrote: Wed Apr 29, 2020 8:03 am Yeah, and that's exactly the problem, because YOU know your map (I already told you that). You know, where the resources are, where the enemy bases are, how many resources this map possess and so on... Don't trust YOUR feelings if you test your own map. A player that doesn't know your map isn't aware of all these key facts and therefore he/she will play your map totally different.

You are absolutely right. Although I always try to put myself in other people's shoes, my biggest fear is to provide too many resources and make a map too easy. Recorded playthroughs are very useful in this sense, but so far the only Youtuber who has covered my works is DK (aka DaMnUFo0 on StarEdit.net) and, while I appreciate his spot-on comments, his videos are only marginally helpful, because his gameplay style is so fast, aggressive and heavily macro-oriented that he makes every map look like a walk in the park (take a look at how he disintegrated the Red Protoss in the 6th mission of VotS, you won't believe your eyes). If you and Chris will still be around when my next campaign is finished, I will ask you to be beta testers. Also, I may consider about rebranding both ToH and VotS as Veteran Level Campaigns instead of Intermediate Level, since Chris labeled them as "very hard" on his spreadsheet (for a comparison, Enslavers SE is labeled as "hard")... I don't know, I will think about it.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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You cannot use David Kang for beta testing a map. I had to remaster his campaigns because they were on a difficulty that only he could possibly beat.

You also cannot use Pr0nogo anymore because he is burnt out and thinks everything is terrible, as discussed earlier.

Just let me and eredalis handle this... alternatively, there are some folks on staredit.net that might be willing to beta test.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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This one looks promising as well, will download it and give it a try!

Btw, I tried to post a message in the TOH campaign thread but it somehow says it needs approval. Yet no one has approved it yet...
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

Post by Eredalis »

You can count on me, Andrea! :plz:
And don't worry, I will still be here for sure. My love and passion for Starcraft is endless. My first contact with Starcraft occurs exactly 22 years ago at the tender age of 18. I bought Starcraft in the first week of April 1998 and since then, Starcraft is a absolutely constant companion for me. <3
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Eredalis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 6:59 am You can count on me, Andrea! :plz:
And don't worry, I will still be here for sure. My love and passion for Starcraft is endless. My first contact with Starcraft occurs exactly 22 years ago at the tender age of 18. I bought Starcraft in the first week of April 1998 and since then, Starcraft is a absolutely constant companion for me. <3

Ah, the memories. I was 23 when I discovered StarCraft in May 1998, and I had recently bought my first PC, a Pentium 200 MMX. I was far from home because I was doing the military service in the Italian Red Cross, and one of the ambulance crew members had just bought a new game and was playing it in the office. I heard the Terran theme and the Marines yelling "Go Go Go!" and "Rock & Roll!", I went to the office and it was love at first sight. The following day I purchased the game and couldn't wait to go back home for the week-end to play it. It took me more than two months to finish all three campaigns, because I could only play when I was home on leave, and I had other awesome games to play, like Quale II, Age of Empires, FIFA 98 and Unreal. As a side note, the guy who introduced me to StarCraft didn't even bother to play the whole game, he only played the Terran campaign and then he lost interest... what a fool, he will never know what he missed.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Nice flashback! Thanks for sharing your memories. <3
I wonder how you would have reacted if someone had told you at the time that you would publish your own campaigns 17 years later with a quality like it's from (old-school!) Blizzard Entertainment. (This is a question I often ask myself regarding my own projects. :D)
  • I own at the time an AMD K6 166 MHz. Best part of that machine was the Soundblaster AWE 64 gold... :huwhaa: (The music of Warcraft II in extended adaptions.)
  • I also remember those days with an beautiful awakening warm spring: Green leafs everywhere on the trees, the sun was always shining and blue sky most of the days (sometimes in the evening a thunderstorm). My heart and mind associated - or better saved those memories with the green jungles of Aiur.
  • I was also so shocked of the events in the Terran and Zerg campaign around Sarah's fate. When Arcturus left her on New Gettysburg and she later emerges from that cocoon - I never expected this and was so shocked. Her physical appearance, her voice (german version), her new personality... :fear:
  • And let's not forget ALL those awesome cinematics between the campaign missions: I am HUGE Alien fan(atic) and as you can imagine I went steep as I saw the cinematic "The Amerigo" for the first time. (Also this threat for the Terrans facing unknown dangerous aliens...)
  • But the culmination was Tassadar's sacrifice at the end. It touches me the most. His last words on the battlefield and then this awesome last video... <3<3<3
There are so much more memories, but I can't tell them all, because it's far too little space here for that. :plz:

P.S.
he only played the Terran campaign and then he lost interest...
I really HATE such giddy people. Met a lot of them in the following years... :sweat:

The late great Johann Sebastian Bach called such scatterbrained and shallow people the right way: Light-minded frivolous spirits.
Last edited by Eredalis on Fri May 01, 2020 4:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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With my spreadsheet, starcraft has the opportunity to get this massive extended universe, marvel style. When I have finished reviewing everything I plan to add other sections detailing the recommended order in which campaigns should be played and where they fit in the starcraft extended universe. interbellum, the Andrea rosa campaigns, the original dark vengeance, vagrants, and surely plenty of others soon to be reviewed, will be part of this extended universe. It will be beautiful and I really hope it brings lots of players to brood war and let them realize there is an entire universe hiding behind the corporate emptiness that has become activisionblizzard.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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chris wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:05 pm With my spreadsheet, starcraft has the opportunity to get this massive extended universe, marvel style. When I have finished reviewing everything I plan to add other sections detailing the recommended order in which campaigns should be played and where they fit in the starcraft extended universe. interbellum, the Andrea rosa campaigns, the original dark vengeance, vagrants, and surely plenty of others soon to be reviewed, will be part of this extended universe. It will be beautiful and I really hope it brings lots of players to brood war and let them realize there is an entire universe hiding behind the corporate emptiness that has become activisionblizzard.
Would love to try this out once it gets out but... couldn't it be somewhat ackward since these campaigns are from different authors, made at different times and not necessarily complementary or part of a "same" timeline?

EDIT: YES! It lets me post now! However, I had several earlier messages in this and other threads in this subforum which have not appeared as of yet... this is somewhat troubling since one of them is a review of maps 1-4 of the Tales of Halcyon campaign which was a somewhat long post...
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Eredalis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:21 am Nice flashback! Thanks for sharing your memories. <3
I wonder how you would have reacted if someone had told you at the time that you would publish your own campaigns 17 years later with a quality like it's from (old-school!) Blizzard Entertainment. (This is a question I often ask myself regarding my own projects. :D)

I often regret the fact that I didn't join the community earlier. During the early 2000s I was working on Age of Empires campaigns, then I moved on to 3D mapping for a tiresome 10 years long Quake II project that even caused minor damage to my eyesight. Yet, the idea of creating something for StarCraft was constantly lurking in my mind. Better late than never, I guess.

Eredalis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:21 am I was also so shocked of the events in the Terran and Zerg campaign around Sarah's fate. When Arcturus left her on New Gettysburg and she later emerges from that cocoon - I never expected this and was so shocked. Her physical appearance, her voice (german version), her new personality... :fear:

LOL me too. In retrospective, there were several hints foreshadowing it (such as the Overmind saying that he had found a creature that would have become the greatest of his agents), yet the plot twist caught me off guard... I was more naive than I would have admitted at the time.

Eredalis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:21 am And let's not forget ALL those awesome cinematics between the campaign missions: I am HUGE Alien fan(atic) and as you can imagine I went steep as I was saw the cinematic "The Amerigo" for the first time. (Also this threat for the Terrans facing unknown dangerous aliens...) But the culmination was Tassadar's sacrifice at the end. It touches me the most. His last words on the battlefield and then this awesome last video... <3<3<3

My favorite cinematic is The Inauguration. Mengsk's pompous propaganda is very reminiscent of the ads in Starship Troopers.

Eredalis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 11:21 am I really HATE such giddy people. Met a lot of them in the following years... :sweat:

The late great Johann Sebastian Bach called such scatterbrained and shallow people the right way: Light-minded frivolous spirits.

I think he didn't even realize that the three episodes were connected. Moreover, despite what he claimed, he had only a shallow knowledge of English (the early copies of StarCraft that were sold in Italy were not localized), so he couldn't have read the game manual. He could complete the Terran missions only because the objectives were straightforward, but sure as hell he didn't get anything of what was going on. Still, that wasn't an excuse for not playing one of the greatest games in history to its fullest. Hell, I've played plenty of Japanese arcade games without understanding a single word. Ok, the Zerg and Protoss behave differently from the Terrans, but for heaven's sake, just try and see what happens, you sad man.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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My favorite cinematic is The Inauguration. Mengsk's pompous propaganda is very reminiscent of the ads in Starship Troopers.
Yeah, you are absolutely right! How could I forget to mention (it was late yesterday) that point, especially mission 3 of the Terran campaign is totally like the siege scene of Starship Troopers. As for the cinematics, they expanded this kind of style in Brood War with the final cinematic for the UED campaign. That was 100 percent Starship Troopers! :plz:
I often regret the fact that I didn't join the community earlier. ... Better late than never, I guess.
Good preparation needs time! ;-)
During the early 2000s I was working on Age of Empires campaigns
I plan to take a closer look to your AOE campaigns, since I possess now AOE Definitive Edition. :)
then I moved on to 3D mapping for a tiresome 10 years long Quake II project that even caused minor damage to my eyesight.
WTF!!! :{
In retrospective, there were several hints foreshadowing it (such as the Overmind saying that he had found a creature that would have become the greatest of his agents), yet the plot twist caught me off guard... I was more naive than I would have admitted at the time.
Yeah, same here! I didn't realize that hint at all...
[...]you sad man.
According to your descriptions of the situation it's understandable, why he lost interest. But for my encounters with such kind of "individuals" there IS acutally an excellent localization in german for Starcraft and Brood War and still some of them choose to ignore the campaign in parts or generally. o_o

I, on the other hand, put such LMFS on my personal ignore list instantly.. :raspberry:
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Arkanis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 3:19 pm Would love to try this out once it gets out but... couldn't it be somewhat ackward since these campaigns are from different authors, made at different times and not necessarily complementary or part of a "same" timeline?
Oh don't worry about that, it's very rare campaigns that get a recommendation conflict with each other and those that do are also conflicting with the canon plotline as well anyway. I think I can take some of those and use them as "what-if" campaigns, similar to what marvel has planned to do next year with all of its past movies.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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Eredalis wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 4:48 am I plan to take a closer look to your AOE campaigns, since I possess now AOE Definitive Edition. :)

Glad to hear that, but I need to warn you: I don't know how those maps will behave with the Definitive Edition, or if they will work at all. Age of Empires was a primitive RTS game without triggers, but it was possible to simulate some of them by exploiting certain game quirks (such as having units appear somewhere on the map after performing a specific action). If the developers made some slight changes to the game engine, then some tricks may not work anymore. The visual aspect of the maps may be heavily altered too. In any case it will be an interesting experiment, since as far as I know no one has ever played my campaigns with the Definitive Edition.
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

Post by Eredalis »

It's time to get back to topic.
We all spam around in this thread, let's stop this madness.

I agreed that you labeled the VotS as "Veteran Level Campaign". But ToH should stay labeled as "Intermediate Level Campaign", because VotS is WAY HARDER...
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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I am not putting a huge word like "intermediate" into my spreadsheet, I think "hard" is more than sufficient, but I decided to replace "very hard" with veteran. Good idea Eredalis :)
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Re: New StarCraft campaign: Voices of the Swarm

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chris wrote: Fri May 01, 2020 7:18 am
Arkanis wrote: Thu Apr 30, 2020 3:19 pm Would love to try this out once it gets out but... couldn't it be somewhat ackward since these campaigns are from different authors, made at different times and not necessarily complementary or part of a "same" timeline?
Oh don't worry about that, it's very rare campaigns that get a recommendation conflict with each other and those that do are also conflicting with the canon plotline as well anyway. I think I can take some of those and use them as "what-if" campaigns, similar to what marvel has planned to do next year with all of its past movies.
Yes but I said it mostly because this idea of an "expanded universe" would really be an aggregation of various universes (since each author is not necessarily bound to each other and could at any time expand on their own universe disregarding the others).

Nonetheless it looks like a good idea to have a set of custom campaigns considered as "good" or "recommended", since there are really a lot of them and, sincerely, not all of them may deserve a try (without disrespecting anyone, but some campaigns I've come across the years have been... well, ugh).
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