Krazy wrote:
Some mods can be a pain in the butt. If you have to downgrade starcraft, that's a huge minus. Plus, if it requires a custom exe, that means it's even harder to make a multiplayer version to convert for b.net play.
This really boils my ass. It's the most overused and weightless complaint there is in modding.
Tools are provided to downgrade. It's as simple as a one-click procedure. Stop whining.
Hamachi is also painfully easy to use if you want multiplayer, but seeing as this thread is about campaigns I fail to see why you even mention this other than groping for straws and needing something to bitch about.
Everything is handed to you on a silver platter and yet you still don't want to use it? That's fine, we don't need people like you.
After working for years and years trying to provide the best experience possible with mods it pisses me off to no end seeing how ungrateful and ignorant some people are.
Last edited by IskatuMesk on Sun Aug 16, 2009 11:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Krazy wrote:
When a mod does go all the way, they do of course achieve a much more cinematic experience. However, I have never seen them actually enhance the gameplay itself.
Try playing Echoes without the exe. Everything will still work (except the valkyries) and will still generally make sense, but it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining (as well as stupidly easy). The only things the exe changes are unit data/iscript stuff.
As for your marine, open up datedit, go to the Marine's Gauss Rifle, and change the explosion to 'Stasis Field'.
You take this like a personal insult, but quite frankly before people actually download and try the mod, there's no immediate way to tell with most mods whether they've had 10 seconds or 10 years put into them, the same with any campaign.
Yes, I take it as a personal insult when someone acts like a retard and bitches and whines about little details that anyone worth their weight wouldn't care about. Also, it's easy to tell how much work has been put in a project by how it's presented by the author. For example, I've uploaded plenty of videos and Laconius presented plenty of media for his campaign. I don't think you have any idea what you're talking about.
"1-click" isn't so "1-click" if you're halfway through a modded campaign and then want to switch to b.net.
I think you're the first person I've ever seen who thinks a mod intended for a campaign is going to work on battle.net. Even if it did, who the hell are you going to play with? Again, semantics and pointless rabble that makes no sense.
Krazy wrote:
And this thread isn't even about campaigns, it's about mods, and why people do or do not use them.
Whiplash! wrote:
Theres something I've noticed recently from some new campaign creators. They don't like to use custom exes. In this day and age Starcraft modding has been pretty refined and there are a general set of guidelines to follow if you're going to create a campaign that is up to current day standards. Besides great triggering, story, and terrain, and even voicing, you need to bring more to the table to truly captivate your audience.
Whiplash's intention was to make this thread about campaigns with mods, and the way I see it, it still is. I got confused when people started mentioning battle.net, because I don't see what that has got to do with it.
I can understand it being annoying when you're running somebody's mod and campaign, and all of a sudden you want to play online, but then again -- when does that ever happen? You could easily Alt-F4 the mod and reload Starcraft normal. Would take you about 15 seconds if you have a slow PC.
It's not my place to care whether other authors choose to update their content with new and fangled devices or not. I, as an individual author, choose to make these programs available for my projects. I also know that most individuals who are "die-hard" mod players know about the existence of these tools because they frequent forums that contain more mod-related activity than these, and so they are introduced to these applications through that medium.
I find you rude, so you're not going to get much better out of me.
You seem to think that being flippant and rude is going to increase the strength of your argument and as such you go out of your way to avoid getting my point. How many campaigns on the main page of this site--the part actually advertised and more accessible to people looking to download and play something--actually link to either of the programs you list?
Where is there any reference to them at all?
The silver platter may exist, but it does no good hiding in the closet. You want people to play mods that require downgrades, then link to the downgrader. That simple.
Some people will never play Flame Knives because they don't want to downgrade.
Yes, any admin in the forums, yes, most people on the forums, yes, lots of people know such programs exist and use them. Does the average starcraft player?
No.
Yeah well, Google isn't very hard to use, so I'm guessing the average players are retards.
It's not my fault people are stupid. I don't care about other people. I only care about you and your comments. If someone asks me, "How do I downgrade?" I link them an aforementioned downgrader. That's that. That's all you had to ask, is if there was an easier or faster way to downgrade, instead of going off in a colossal tantrum that makes you come off as an ungrateful asshole.
I'm sorry if it seems like I'm ignoring your posts, but that's really all I care about. Even the guys at TL didn't mind the prospect of downgrading and they were totally new to the process. If the average doofus comes onto FK and thinks the world's going to end because it takes ten minutes to switch between versions, well tough luck. I'd tell Meta to update his webpage to include the utilities. But that's outside of my "care sphere", you see. I'm only caring about what's going on right here.
There's a pretty easy solution to the problems. All you have to do is get the notion of downgrading applications more public. They aren't hard to use even for total retards; it's a one-button processes. You run the application, you know the version you want already, you click the button. Unless you're running on some hacked rip of starcraft and lack registry entries, it will automatically downgrade everything for you. Perfect - you're now ready to run the mod.
I don't really play campaigns, but I think the whole idea of multiplayer campaigns is a fairly new idea to see any real exploration. In which case I'd suggest to either use hamachi or Shadowflare's server. There are options out there that the authors of said projects can look into to improve the experience of their players should they choose to use mods.
No, I agree, there's plenty of shitty mods out there. But I wouldn't ever base an opinion of a mod on the need to downgrade. There are many advantages to using older versions of starcraft. Maybe someone doesn't understand that, but I do. So I always aim to provide the necessary information and tools to my users so I am not asked questions like "wat r downgrade". I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's the fault of the authors themselves if they don't make this information available to their userbase, because if you are using an older version of the game it is your responsibility to make this as easily accessible and pain-free for your userbase.
Some projects, like meta's, are made before the age of downgraders. Fair enough, it will give you some grief if you aren't used to dealing with it. But in FK's case I would say the trouble is more than worth it. How do you determine if it's worth the trouble? That's also up to the author to show their project in a way which is inviting.
If I were to make a campaign, I would heavily involve mod elements because I am an experienced enough modder to use these elements to provide a totally new and unique campaign experience by introducing gameplay elements that players haven't seen before. I would most certainly revert to version 1.10, and I would provide the tools necessary to easily switch between versions. When I updated my old mods, I made these tools available. I think it's an authors responsibility to update their project and keep in tune with recent events so that they can provide lasting quality to their projects. It's no different than companies. GPG doesn't update Supreme Commander, so Supcom falls off the face of the earth. Blizzard updates Starcraft, Starcraft is widely known as the most balanced game in existence. An author dedicated to his project is obligated to update information relating to his project when stuff like this becomes available.
Making a mod is definitely harder than making a map. Because a general mod has to be balanced and functional across a huge variety of maps, while a map is just a map.
I don't know what the average person looks to modding for when they do a map, but I think a lot of it is unnecessary because they don't create entirely new units or gameplay-changing experiences with the mod. But when they create a mod that needs a different version of SC they are obligated to provide the means and information necessary for that activity.
CC's starcraft section has been in dire need of an update for many years. When lav and I started looking at it in the recent past, I for one was totally shocked to discover the most recent tutorial was from 2000, with most of the content from 1999 and 1998. While some of this content could still potentially be useful and I told Lav to archive it, I agree that there needs to be a new and fresh setup for newcomers to see when encountering custom content.
Since I doubt any of the campaign authors feel it necessary to update their content, perhaps I should pester lav about creating some new page detailing the process of downgrading and providing these two utilities to the end-user. That should solve many of the problems and it's really all that we can do without the authors themselves stepping in and providing the tools as a part of their project package.
As for SEN, it was pretty low on the food chain as far as modding is concerned, and that's largely at fault of the administration who slacked off in keeping their site up to date and providing a positive environment for new modders to prosper in. But that's another story for another thread.
just add a BWAI dowgrader link to every SC campaign (except VotF 1 and 2) and add a note mentioning what version to downgrade to.
Pronogo wrote:
No battle.net, problem not solved.
Why the hell would you need battlenet for a custom campaign? when you're done with the campaign just use the revert to 1.16.1 button and bnet will be back.
Krazy wrote:
As I pointed out, the main page at CC doesn't really offer a straightforward guide on how to easily play modded campaigns, nor does the first hit for "Starcraft Campaigns" on google: http://www.rakrent.com/rtsc/html/scbw1.htm#campaignlinks
Would you believe this is how I discovered CC? Someone should contact the owner of rakrent and tell him to update his site.
Last edited by chris on Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
[quote="Zilla-"]
campaign creations presents campaign creations starcraft campaign contest
[/quote]
[quote="Lavarinth on podcast"]Hey kids, this is Lavarinth. I know I didn't say much in this podcast, actually, I didn't say anything at all. See you guys on the next podcast.[/quote]
Okay, I think there's a confusion going on. When I say the word MOD, I'm not referring to a 500+Mb beast that changes all of the terran units into forest creatures and the nuclear missile into a blood nova spell bomb flash grenade mortar attack power shotgun. Things like that ARE harder to make than maps. What I mean is an EXE file that changes the Starcraft splash screen into a different one, changes the title music and maybe some other tracks. A program that gives Fenix a different unit response set, or a modified / custom unit portrait. Maybe switch some of the weapons through some elementary DatEditing.
Now, I'm clearly not as knowledgable about these things as the majority of the people posting in this thread, but....
a) How this simple kind of MOD interferes with Bnet is beyond me...
b) How this kind of MOD utilizes Starcraft's version is beyond me... It's just changing portraits and shit!
c) If it does indeed carry some sort of blueprint of the Starcraft version present on the creator's PC, wouldn't that be the most updated upon release of the MOD? I'd want people to play it, so I'd update my Starcraft version before compiling the SEMPQ if that's what it takes.
I should have been clearer when I said I expected MODs. What I meant to say was, I automatically get more excited about a campaign when I see the author's gone through the "trouble" of adding unique content, or rather changing existing content into something that looks good, plays nicely and is unique to that particular campaign.
Let me also take this opportunity to say that over the past weeks, I've seen some impressive campaigns that DO NOT use any MODding of any kind at all and those things immediately blow my point away again. I just love authors' attention to detail and delivering unique experiences. Be it a MOD or not!
Edit:
Mesk, I can only hope you can forgive my blatant ignorance regarding these matters.
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
