StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

(June 6th, 2009 - June 15th, 2009) Completed: July 31st, 2009
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote:
By the way, is there a list of your music tracks anywhere?
There is a list in the epilogue (which also serves as our credits), but i posted the list in the spoiler tab below (for compression)
Spoiler
Mission 1:
Title: The Chase of Highway
Artist: Nobuo Uematsu
Album: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children OST

Mission 2:
Title: After You
Artist: dj-nate
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 3:
Title: Those Who Fight Further
Artist: Nobuo Uematsu
Album Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children OST

Mission 4:
Title: Tetris: Dark World
Artist: elmusho
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 5:
Title: With Gun & Crucifix
Artist: Danman87
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 6:
Title: The Evil Project Final
Artist: Meonly70
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 7:
Title: Deluxe Boink
Artist: Shroud-POW
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 8:
Title: Wrecked by Déjà Vu
Artist: Approaching Nirvana
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 9:
Title: Hybrid Statement
Artist: Danman87
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 10:
Title: Party Rave
Artist: dj-nate
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 11:
Title: Starwolf (Orchestrated)
Artist: Djsnypa
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 12:
Title: [karousel] Come one Come All
Artist: S-Rock
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 13:
Title: Entering the Stronghold
Artist: Danman87
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 14:
Title: Battle in the Forgotten City
Artist: Nobuo Uematsu
Album: Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children OST

Mission 15:
Title: Desolate Macabre (METAL)
Artist: FeinDogg101
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 16:
Title: HOT Fiery Anger
Artist: JinNJuice
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 17:
Title: Raging Typhoon
Artist: dj-nate
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 18:
Title: Forge of Time 2
Artist: Ciferon
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 19:
Title: Battle Music Glory
Artist: Jubenjubjub
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Mission 20:
Title: Valley of Death
Artist: ZENON
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal

Epilogue:
Title: Zodiac – Ambience
Artist: z0di4c
Album: NewGrounds Audio Portal
You'll find nearly all of it is from the audio portal on NewGrounds. Link below:
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote: Guess you didn't see edit.  There's not supposed to be a vespene at your main in mission 3, right?
Sry, posted before that edit was there. Correct. the closest geyser is south of ur base
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by omega20 »

Huh, where's mission 17? :p
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

So this was our first full series of campaign missions that we've ever completed. (We've done some other small things on the side, but this is the biggest thing we've done/finished). So, we would appreciate any feedback any of you might have while you play it for future projects that we will be submitting to the site in the future. And, for the people who have (somehow) already completed the campaign:

Don't look at this unless you've honestly finished! It's a surprise!
Spoiler
The mini expansion that is yet to come
And, yes, we know that submitting the content without rushing it (i.e. not within the last hour remaining in the contest) is something we should take into practice. We are extremely sorry for that! :-[
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Here's some thoughts so far:: (mission I mentioned earlier)
Spoiler
Don't hide the vespene gas ;)
Spoiler
That was just a bit of an experiment with early mission experience, but we'll keep it in mind.  :)
Map with Dani:
Spoiler
Defense maps are cake if you can dt block ramps... like, boringly easy.  I afk'd for a few minutes and came back with timer at 0
Spoiler
Oh, right.... forgot about that strat..... we'll make sure to either give the comp players more observers (or their detector equivalent) or disable dark templar for the player.
Also on that same mission:
Spoiler
Timer ran out and no victory trigger
Spoiler
Hmmm... I remember experiencing that problem in an earlier version and fixing it.... Idk. Maybe a forgot to save or continued working from an older version.
For the level after that:
Spoiler
should be a counter so the player knows how many bcs have been made
Spoiler
Is there a way to set a counter where it only shows the player? We set a leaderboard on a later mission and it showed players that it didn't apply to. We left it in that one but decided not to put it in the mission you are referring to because:
1) We didn't know how to get rid of the players it didn't apply to.
2) We weren't sure how we felt about the leaderboard for the reason above.
And for all the missions:
Spoiler
needs moar doodads
Spoiler
You'll notice some missions have more than others. On later missions, we realized we forgot that step too late.  :-\
Edit 1:

For the Alex desert mission:
Spoiler
music is looping too much, is overlaying on itself
Spoiler
Noticed that problem early, too, and fixed it... Again, maybe I forgot to save or continued working from an older version. Weak....  :'(
You're feedback is much appreciated (although you're making criticism easy for the judges :P). Regardless, keep 'em comin'! If the errors are game-breaking and/or abundant, we certainly don't deserve to win.

Part of the problem, imo, is that we focused a little too much on the story and not enough on the mechanics. Tim did nearly all the triggers and I wrote the dialogue, story, etc. Maybe we should have gone with a shorter campaign. But, then again, I feel every mission is completely necessary to portray the story the way I envisioned it. Idk. Maybe this campaign just wasn't right for something with a deadline...  :-\
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Mon Aug 03, 2009 11:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote: Sorry, I hope you're not taking my feedback too harshly.  Ultimately, I'd rather have a 20-mission long campaign err on being too easy than on being too hard.  But there's "too easy" and then there's "broken."  For some of this stuff, I don't honestly know whether you'd be better off fixing it now and taking a flat "late" penalty or leaving it as is for the *contest*.  But, ultimately, as a *campaign* I know that the amount of interest you as mapmakers have is going to be stronger right now than it likely will be later, if I'm going to provide this sort of feedback, it's going to be now or never as far as I can tell. 

I might be the only one, but I've approached this whole contest as a gamer first, as a mapmaker second, and as a contestant third.  So when I tell you the bugs I experience, I hope you bear in mind that it's coming from the first 2, not from the third... especially since there's no doubt in my mind that anything I pick up, Ricky will easily find himself (he's been *way* more thorough than me so far, if his feedback to Desler's campaign is any indication). 
Spoiler
The final mission, is, unfortunately an example of "broken".  Computer players only mine minerals, they never harvest gas and they never produce units.  I think the same might be true of the penultimate mission.  I was attacked *heavily* early on, but never after the first two waves.

Glitches aside, your mapmaking style does suggest that you have a good understanding of what *should* make a fun map.  You understand the importance of having available expansions, of having reasonable amounts of enemy static defense, and obviously a very strong comprehension for the starcraft universe and all its little tics.  There's really no doubt in my mind that your forte is your comprehension of the lore, and include more of it than every other campaign in this contest combined.  As for your map design, it's glitchy but moving in the right direction.  Other than the lack of victory triggers, I never felt like a map was unbeatable.  The relative ease of the campaign compared to others (partly due to glitches, partly due to your style) gave me ample time to experiment and find fun ways to screw with the computer--which for a lot of people *is* the fun part.

And as a video I'm going to make tonight will show, I have had fun playing your campaign :P
No, man, it's totally cool. You actually have no idea how much I appreciate all of these problems you find with it. Like I said, this is the first big project we've completed and we probably focused far more on the lore than the mechanics. We will probably be fixing this campaign and releasing along with the..... well.... you know  ;).... in the future, so it should be far more fun when we do that.
Also:

(big spoilers)
Spoiler
Poor Alexei :(
Spoiler
Hehe, did you like his arc? I was unsure about how it ended, but I thought it would be an interesting twist  ;). To be honest, though, I think Raynor had it WAY worse than Stukov did, but that's just me. Also, now that you're finished, make sure to see my earlier spoiler notes in this thread.
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by Lavarinth »

Krazy wrote: Awesome!  2%, 22 minutes remaining.
No offense, but I always chuckle at your slow downloads. ;D
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by Krazy »

Well, finally got the video up.  Youtube processing.  Ignore where it says "Muse" at the end, I changed it to "Dreamtime" by Ayreon at the last minute and forgot to change the credits.

The Hands of Power

Some notes:

I forgot to mention earlier, when you kill the psi disruptor building thing that I'm nuking at 0:55, the map thought that I had killed all the mercenaries toward the southwest of the map too, even though I hadn't, and gave me victory.

1:14 is the dt block I referred to earlier.

1:18 is your allied comp building buildings in the middle of nowhere, and therefore getting pwned by enemy comp marines.

1:53 is the purple ghosts winning ;)

2:08 is the comp not having any men inside those bunkers... something I only realized after I nuked ;)

3:49 you get a shot of the computer not mining

Everything else should be just me having fun...
Last edited by Krazy on Tue Aug 04, 2009 2:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by omega20 »

I see you paid attention to SC Wikia articles when writing this campaign's plot...  ;D
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote: Well, finally got the video up.  Youtube processing.  Ignore where it says "Muse" at the end, I changed it to "Dreamtime" by Ayreon at the last minute and forgot to change the credits.

The Hands of Power

Some notes:

I forgot to mention earlier, when you kill the psi disruptor building thing that I'm nuking at 0:55, the map thought that I had killed all the mercenaries toward the southwest of the map too, even though I hadn't, and gave me victory.

1:14 is the dt block I referred to earlier.

1:18 is your allied comp building buildings in the middle of nowhere, and therefore getting pwned by enemy comp marines.

1:53 is the purple ghosts winning ;)

2:08 is the comp not having any men inside those bunkers... something I only realized after I nuked ;)

3:49 you get a shot of the computer not mining

Everything else should be just me having fun...
So, for the mining problems and bunker problems, how do we fix that? We used insane difficulty for every mission and they still act retarded. we also put AI scripts for every bunker to get occupied immediately, but they still leave later. Is there a better AI script(s) to use?

And the purple ghosts winning map was a bit rushed and we didnt finish balancing the waves. Our bad.  :-\
I see you paid attention to SC Wikia articles when writing this campaign's plot...  ;D
Hehe, sure did! the SC wiki is my home away from home! I love that site! I'm not sure if you've seen it, but Psi and I have discussions and debates on the meanings of different aspects of the lore, what we think is going to happen, etc. Love it!
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Tue Aug 04, 2009 2:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by omega20 »

thebrowncloud wrote: Hehe, sure did! the SC wiki is my home away from home! I love that site! I'm not sure if you've seen it, but Psi and I have discussions and debates on the meanings of different aspects of the lore, what we think is going to happen, etc. Love it!
Yeah, I've seen it. I'm not very active, but I'm one of the admins of that site. ;)
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Alright, so it is decided. We are going to do a remix version of StarCraft: Hands of Power and release it sometime in the future and will be including (because I'm kinda sick of trying to hide it until people have played the original all the way through) the mini expansion that we plan to make. We, however, will still be keeping the character it focuses on a secret until closer to the release of the whole package (which we still don't know when that will be. Sorry to go Blizzard on you  :-\). We are still tempering with adding the original Zeratul arc we had planned back into it, even though its plausibility was completely eliminated based on the information on DTS: Twilight, simply because the first two missions of it are already done. We may even completely redo some of the mission we've already made (11 being an example of that because it ended up being a bit of a mess, although Krazy liked the concept  ;).) We will keep you posted, but this may not even necessarily be the first thing we do next, so don't be expecting it as early as next month.

And on the expansion, I will give a tiny bit of teaser information (because it has its foot in the door of the writing process):
It is based during the vanilla HoP timeline, but not all of it, and may even span a little afterwords. It is not Kerrigan (we are sticking with the concept that she just chilled for the four years) and is not a madeup character. You may begin to guess who it is and I will send a PM to anybody who guesses right (but I'm only going to say "You've guessed it" so don't just immediately guess every character or you won't be able to tell which one it is!) And, since there isn't a deadline this time, we will make sure to test it thoroughly, consider strategies that break the missions *looks at 6 and  :(* and try to work around them, and continue to try and put a variety of mission types. Thanks for your support and we hope you will eagerly anticipate our new and improved StarCraft: Hands of Power!

Also, Krazy and others willing, keep any feedback or criticism coming. Mechanics is the biggest thing I would like advice on, but even story things. What were some of your favorite and least favorite parts/missions? Things you think should of happened/should not have happened (leaning more towards 'should not.' I like to make my stories appealing, but not predictable.)

And a question for people who have already played it all the way through:
Spoiler
Was it at all obvious that Rob Hanssen was a traitor (besides his name being an historical reference; referring to Robert Hanssen, the Soviet spy that was in the CIA during the Cold War)?
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft: Hands of Power -- Completed!

Post by thebrowncloud »

Krazy wrote: Well, I really liked the "kill all enemy pylons" mission the first time I ran across it.  It really built Artanis's style and character for me.  However, there's also too much of a good thing.  Three missions with that as the basis of gameplay seemed like too much... it started to seem like Artanis really did think the protoss woman was slow in the head.  Artanis actually started to rub me as a misogynist toward the end actually... you wonder if he doesn't want her to fight cause she's a woman.  I mean, come on, let her blow *something* up at least.  Although I did like her toward the very end when she was like, "No damn it, I'm fighting NOW!" or something to that effect (perhaps slightly less directly). 
For the pylons thing, it was really stressing Artanis' desire to refrain from annihilating his own people just because they didn't agree with him. He doesn't seem like the kind of person that would want to be seen as a tyrant, does he? As for the character development I was going with more of the feel that Selendis was willing to fight for the wrong reasons in the beginning, but I can see where you're coming from. The Artanis arc was a bit more of a character development role for Selendis, but had a few things for the Hierarchy as well. When I first heard about Selendis and her personality (as well as what I read in DTS: Twilight), she seemed like she came from a very old-fashioned past and was mildly blind to the virtues of a true executor. The development for Artanis was more along the lines of him feeling he needs to take more charge than he actually does and Selendis sort of puts him in his place at the end. I wasn't trying to make Artanis seem sexist  :P.
Krazy wrote:
And a question for people who have already played it all the way through:
Spoiler
Was it at all obvious that Rob Hanssen was a traitor (besides his name being an historical reference; referring to Robert Hanssen, the Soviet spy that was in the CIA during the Cold War)?

I didn't see it coming, but I thought you could have done more earlier on to build Hanssen as a character to make the shock factor even stronger.  Your cast is so big he risked being somewhat lost in the crowd.
True, true. If we had time, we certainly would have made it longer so we could fit more stuff with him in it. I feel like Raynor could have had more missions in the beginning that were more successes so it didn't seem like he was constantly getting slammed. However, I wouldn't have put too many of those in because it would take away from the arc's main theme that Raynor gets completely whittled down to near nothing.

Another couple questions for those of you who have completed the campaign:
Spoiler
1) Did you feel like we should have involved the Fist of Ulrezaj more or even left them out completely?
2) What, if anything, do you think we should have pursued more in the series?
3) Was introducing Talrim in the very last mission an ineffective decision on my part? (Note: We will most likely make a series that involves a backstory for him. He was a bit of a last minute character thrown into the bunch, considering there aren't many known members of the Shelak tribe that are still alive)
4) Do you think Eredas and Taldarin were too short-lived?
5) Which character would you have liked to see more of?
6) Do you think anything we portrayed were unlikely events? Which?
7) The Remnants are quite obviously our most speculative faction in the whole series. Do you think it was an effective choice of events?
8) Nova Squadron is sort of our assumed "lap dog" for the Emperor in our series, but it seems highly probable that Omega Squadron was also still around. Do you think we should have put them in it, somehow, as well?
9) Do you think Mengsk's taking of Korhal was unrealistically late?
10) Which mission seemed the most completely "out of the blue" random mission? Why?
Sorry, I'm kinda asking for the full review here... I'm very self-concious about my writing and like to get as much criticism from as many people as possible so I can get better. Mechanics are important, but you can improve those with practice. I need to know what I can do to be a better writer for StarCraft fan fiction (especially since I'm gonna go to town when the SC2 editor comes out!) Feel free to only answer some of the questions (if you wanna answer any at all)! I will happily take anything and everything you have to say!  ;D
Last edited by thebrowncloud on Tue Aug 04, 2009 10:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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