Starcraft: Rise of the Protoss

[sharf224]

Name: Jeff
Age: 17
Storyline: The Protoss have come to a previously dormant planet, that has housed Protoss artifacts and technologies for eons. Upon arrival the Protoss are shocked to discover a war between the Zerg and Terran being waged across this sacred world. This conflict is preventing the Protoss from establishing a suitable foothold on the planet.

Direction: We start off following a Zealot and two Dark Templars making there way to a hidden temple, where a long lost Protoss Judicator, Zilous is held captive in stasis. The discovery of Judicator Zilous was partially accidental, but played well in the favor of the Protoss. Upon rescue the Judicator is returned to a small colony. There the Protoss learn of the Judicator's Arbiter, and that they must reunite Zilous and his Arbiter in order for operations to continue. Here is where the campaign becomes a bit more free. Once you have Judicator Zilous in his Arbiter, you can more or less do what ever objective in what ever order to collect artifacts and tech. There will be several side quests to do along the way as well.

[Campaign Creations]

Approved.

[sharf224]

Breif Update, The oppening cutscene is nearly finished. From there I can finally start on the actuall gameplay aspect. Also, I thought I'd mention my inclusion of full voiceovers for the breifing and cutscenese. When I finish the intro, I'll post screen shots.

[sharf224]

Haven't posted an update, and unfortunately no screenshots yet. I've just about finished the intro cutscene, and the breifing. Finally got all the voice overs done. Once that's done I'll be able to start work on the campaigns.

[sharf224]

Rather then try and take a video, or screen shots, I uploaded a protected(so no stealing) version of my map so far. It has the intro cutscene and breifing, and ends just as you get control to play.

Here is the link to the map

[sharf224]

Ok, I've done a good chunk more work on this map. I've added subtitles, expanded the terrain to cover 3/4 of the map, and got up to the first mission objective(establish a base) while you can't actually accomplish this yet, the new version lets you watch the intro, build a base, and explore the world so far (one artifact is already placed so you can get an idea of where one will be and how to get a hold of it.).

Here is the first demo.

[sharf224]

It's finished. Had to redo the ending, and some other stuff to make it work in single player. A note for anyone who wants to play it (who isn't a judge) it works much better on battle.net, or lan.

Here it is:
Mirror1
Mirror2(Megaupload)

[Ricky_Honejasi]

it works much better on battle.net, or lan.

Do note that b.net have a max limit of 4 megs and your map is 10 megs.

Although that have no bearing on the contest, it might be necessary to have a light version (under 4 megs) if you want it to be more popular over b.net after.

EDIT : The above is a bit confusing, more precisely b.net map transfers would only occurs if the map is below the 4 megs max. Although I believe everyone that already got the map in their BW download folder can play the map over b.net.

[sharf224]

Exactly, and seeing as how it is single player, and every other player is used for triggers in some form or another, there is no way someone could download it over Battle.net. My point is that on Battle.net or LAN, the timing is different, so the cutscenes work much better.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

===CRITICAL

-> YES - Has a Judicator Zilous main character
-> YES - Judicator Zilous uses an arbiter
-> YES - Judicator Zilous is a protagonist

===TEXT
-> + Correct orthograph/grammar for most of the time
-> + Informs the player correctly of the events.
-> + Some character personality (amplified with voices)
-> + Some story in briefing and cutscenes
-> - Lack of text formatting for reading (lines goes fully from left to right)

===PROFESSIONAL
-> + Quite a few interesting custom sounds played at the right time
-> + Credits present and a bit more extended (author name, voices, sounds)
-> - Thread updates are too limited, no screenshots (only map previews to play).

===TRIGGERING
-> + Triggers works
-> + Some basic cinematics
-> + Some location use (but not switches)
-> + Hyper Trigger Use (especially noticeable for the end map's effects)
-> - Limited trigger complexity (especially outside of cinematics)
-> - Have some odd bugs

===MAPPING - LAYOUT

-> + The layout seems very good overall.
-> + Had no trouble maneuvering the maps.

===MAPPING - BEAUTY

-> + Very good overall (looks good, doesn't look rushed although terrain might look a bit plain at times).
-> + A good quantity of doodads are placed overall
-> - Doodads placement seems unequal, some areas clearly have a good quantity of well-placed doodads and some are simply devoid of them.
-> - A doodad to the bottom-left corner of the map seems completely out of place due to mismatching ground colors. Although that area is far from critical to the gameplay and unlikely to be seen.

===BROWNIE POINTS
Note : This doesn't influence directly the scores but might improve it

-> + Custom voices (fairly decent too even if they sound a bit Terran'ish)

===DRAWBACKS
Note : Might potentially influence negatively the campaign's scores.

-> - Too melee-oriented (other than fetching all 3 artifacts)
-> - Occasionally we hear the sounds/voices' last 1-2 seconds again

===TESTING LOG

-> Bug : Thurgix's Portrait still stay up after the briefing ends.

-> Complain : No "Press Start" message and no 100% clear indication that the briefing doesn't go longer when it hits the end (doesn't help due to Thurgix' portrait being still there).

-> Complain : Takes a bit too much time to destroy the Static cell (should have lowered the HP by half or so to allow the dark templars destroy it instantly or only in a few seconds).

-> Issue : Looks very odd with the constant Center View during the cinematic (should only center view when there is a bit of distance is covered by cinematic characters).

-> Odd : During the time where Arcaniss goes on the summit after freeing Zilous, it can happen sometimes that it center view between the summit and Arcaniss' locations (not yet on the summit) due to a side effect of the constant Center View trigger.

-> Bug : Sometimes, it can happen that Arcaniss and Zilous are duplicated to the cinematic base but not removed from the summit. It looks even worse due to the Center View having a tendency to center view the Arcaniss on the summit instead of the cinematic base (where we are supposed to see).

-> Bug : If the earlier bug occurred, the blue (neutral) Arcaniss and Zilous on the summit and are killable in addition of having the real teal versions controllable.

-> Issue : Arcaniss and Zilous should have a different color from the rest of the troops (especially Arcaniss since he is a teal hero zealot that is easy to mix up with normal teal zealots).

-> Text objectives should show up instead of having to manually check them in the game menu (even if there is no voice for those lines)

-> Issue : No death message on either hero's death (Sudden defeat "out of nowhere")

-> Complain : The beginning can be very hard due to a wave of mutalisks coming when you only have Zilous and 2 dragoons against air.

-> Complain : The "Protoss" in "This is the Protoss Artifact Temple" sounds odd when said by a Protoss character (the same way that a human won't say it's a Human Temple, it's just plain Temple). Although seems to occur only once.

-> Praise : A nice final chant with sounds, voices and special effect to amplify the whole finale.

-> Text (Briefing)  : "two Dark Templar" instead of "two Dark Templars"
-> Text (Briefing)  : "Tred lightly" instead of "Tread lightly"
-> Text (Mission)    : "Stabalized" instead of "Stabilized"
-> Text (Mission)    : "in anyway" instead of "in any way" ("I will aid you in anyway possible")
-> Text (Objectives) : "retreive" instead of "retrieve"