Campaign creation advice/tips needed

[bajadulce]

Unfortunately No.  Sons of War had too many cooks in the kitchen and ultimately after all the knives and pans were thrown at each other, nothing much remained.  The building blocks for Sons of War however are all very much there.  By building blocks I mean the basic .grp's as well as a shitload of really GOOD maps + one hell of a good writer.

Maybe SOW's biggest hurdle was getting what little modding was necessary archived in an .exe so that the mappers would have something to work with.  After Ago Trooper and MidnightGladius disappeared, SOW's Sgt HK came to both Mesk and myself to lend a hand.  I was a bit busy at the time and couldn't set aside the necessary time.  Mesk, who I feel is without doubt the most creative artist to ever grace SCraft attempted to communicate with the members and accommodate their needs, but was soon overwhelmed by the sheer chaos and disorder of everything that had preceded his arrival.  Mesk will be the first to tell you that organization is not his strong suite and while his world maybe quite disheveled, dealing with someone else's mess must have blew a few fuses in Meskies head! 

What SOW really needed was an anal muther fucker like me to come through and start the mod from scratch, build spreadsheets, get everything organized, and let Mesk do his own thing uninterrupted.  When I finally had some free time, Sarge was now gone and a definite immaturity had began to sink in as evident by inviting SEN's resident clown TZ into the mix.  What remains now are a handful of mappers who would like to see their hard work come to some kind of fruition and frankly I don't blame them.

[IskatuMesk]

Their leadership was always extremely weak which was the wrong foundation to deal with. Sarge is a great guy but I think he was vastly unprepared to deal with the mess SoW was left in when he decided to try to bring it back together. What he needed to do was purge everyone and start from scratch team-wise and find some good, reliable people, and put together a small team. Not 3 mappers and 2 writers (who constantly bickered with each other about the writing), just 2 people max while he handles the graphics.

But SoW should never have been attempted in the first place. The initial leader ditched the project early in, Oscar tried to take up the reigns and gave it team members but there was never any form of unity or direction. It got dragged on for years and virtually nothing got done besides Sarge's awesome models and Gonissa's writing. The project was first and foremost a campaign, not a mod, and very little mapping had been done when I left for good. Hell, several guys took up modeling early into the project like MoH and actually are really good modelers now. So it did some of them some good, right?

The modding division was a complete and total trainwreck.

[Lavarinth]

There were good maps? I playtested the first Zerg maps and I felt like I was replaying the tutorial maps as I was instructed on how to build a Spawning Pool. Either way, shame for the mappers who did well, and the writers who crafted a story, but I can't say I have much to say for SgtHK. Anywho, baja, you planning on tossing in some new tilesets, or did I just blow your mind?

[bajadulce]

SgtHK was awesome!  Maybe he was a bit too serious but got shit done instead of screwing around spamming stupid crap in Scraft forums.  I liked how productive he was.  Didn't really know him other than that.

Master of Hobbit had some definite skills that's for sure Mesk.  He was part of another dead project at Warboards dealing with the StarWars Universe.  can't remember the name of that project now.  I tried to commandeer him to build the missing infiltrator graphic for Open Rebellion, but I don't think he took me very serious.

@ the maps of SOW
Hmmm.  Well again, I'm no expert at these things, but the one or 2 that I helped write a custom AI script for seemed quite good to me.  Maybe a little too hard when I played them.  Two mappers from the project have expressed interest in helping here.  To be honest, I don't know much about them as far as their online personality etc.  But I'm always willing to give anyone a chance.  They only get one tho and I pretty much cast ppl aside once they blow it or get on my bad side.  I'm not a forgiving person.. maybe something I need to work on... or not!

@ new tilesets
I have experimented with 2.  One is quite boring and is simply converting the creep to a flagstone like base for the one and only unit that uses creep, the Wanderer Chamber (which auto-spawns Wanderers)  The second tileset is supposed to represent the UnderWorld and is much more ambitious in scope.  Unfortunately, I haven't spent much time on this.  This mod is just so enormous and time consuming that a lot of things such as this are always on the back burner.  This has been a huge undertaking for just one person.

Anywhoo.. here's an ingame background.pcx that shows what the Underworld tileset would look like zoomed out.
[imgwh 640x480]http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/7875/underworld.png[/imgwh]

I do have a question regarding preplaced buildings and SCMDraft.
I can't seem to figure out how to preplace a buliding so that add-ons can be constructed without having to move the building.  I have the "snap to tile" feature enabled, but they always seem to be askew?   This is only apparent with preplaced buildings.  Normally constructed buildings don't suffer from this.  Maybe it has to do with the fact that the building in this case is an armory and the add-on is an observatory haha.  Tho adding a shield battery add-on to my preplaced command center seems to work fine.  (CC's might be a different placement due to mineral fields etc?)  ... I'm really confused by a lot of these elementary "mappin" stuff that's for sure!

[imgwh 640x480]http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/4086/addonsx.png[/imgwh]

Also, my general game mode triggers have a small hiccup when someone builds a transcendent path choice.  And well I can't seem to quite work it out.  It only happens when someone just happens to initiate a trans path while the leaderboard is cycling through the tax brackets...  tho this posted code is prob way too big of a mess to flowchart and prob should just upload a condensed version/test map of said issues.

EDIT:.. hmm the preview showed the following code in a codebox.. but after posting, the bbtag dissappeared  Prob too big?  Here's the code uploaded as a .txt instead.

[IskatuMesk]

Might wanna spoiler tag that code, it does scroll the screen quite a lot. Would be nice to see a custom tileset for a change, but it's a hell of a lot of work to cut it up and align it properly.

[bajadulce]

in the post preview window,  the code was wrapped in a a codebox.  After posting, the bbtags just disappeared?  Prob was too long? Sorry bout that.

@ pre-placed buildings and non-default add-ons.
I've killed 2 birds with one stone in regards to my building placement and add-on issues.  A modified campaign script now builds both the building and the add-on behind the curtains with an unused computer player prior to it being transferred/revealed to the player.  I really don't think there's a way to do this with just the map editor alone.  It doesn't recognize something like an observatory as an add-on no matter how the underlying building (an armory in this case) was placed.  Building these buildings as opposed to pre-placing them in the editor seems to work.   

[bajadulce]

I'm having a serious problem with custom AI scripts ran in UMS and have been trying to solve this riddle for the past half decade.  For whatever reason AI scripts ran in UMS have this strange troop movement that has been described as "moon walking" or the "wheel of death" by other script coders who have experienced this.  It's as if the cpu can't decide whether to attack or guard its main base.  Troops look completely wacko as a result.  Nothing like this can be seen in melee.   

Not being able to solve this,  I'd like to resort to using triggers to send all units on random strategic missions with a timed delay/preserve trigger and just train units via the scripts.  This will mean that the AI no longer "stages" and will do that weak single-line attack formation we've all seen a million times, but at least it will resemble something more normal than the Moondance they currently do.  So I have a couple of questions.

1. What would be a good way to randomize the time between attacks?
2. What would be a good way to have the AI stage its units outside of a base before sending on suicide?  I would think this location would need to be dynamic rather than some static placement.  And what kind of criteria would make for a good staging area other than proximity to enemy base as well as lack of an enemy unit residing in this location?

[Lavarinth]

You could randomize through a plethora is switches.

http://www.campaigncreations.org/starcraft/resources/staredit_tutorials/randomization

(Yes, I realize this tutorial isn't listed in the StarEdit database of tutorials, I haven't finalized these by Falk yet.)

[Lavarinth]

I'm itching for an update, here.

[bajadulce]

No updates, because I haven't experienced any problems nor had any questions lately. 

I did manage to actually finish the first campaign map the other night which is quite a feat in itself.  I had no idea how time consuming mapping was.  In the end, despite how corny it seems to have turned out with all the pop quizzes and riddles, I'm sure it's worth a few laughs or two for any that might give it a try.

As for the mod itself, I may someday create a topic here featuring the campaign of course.  For most that are unaware of the mod, I've spent a lot of time integrating computer players into the included multiplayer UMS maps complete with a polling system that allows players to vote for the difficulty level.  These same UMS maps are also configured to be played without a computer.  In these instances the player slides into the CPU slot.  All of the fancy triggers that went into making this happen work fantastic, but unfortunately the AI is a complete train wreck when ran in UMS despite everything I've tried.  And so I am currently reconfiguring the standard multiplayer mode/triggers to do away with comps all together plus reworking some odd timings/game play paths.  The mod will absolutely still remain a UMS multiplayer experience with computer play being confined to the single player (melee) and possibly an additional custom UMS insane compstomp or two.

So ya,  lots still being worked on all the time.  I never grow tired of working on this mod or reworking things for that matter  .  2 years, 3 years, 5 years.. whatever it takes.  It's all just for fun and this is the only other thread I have created of the mod outside its home.  A generic help thread at that.

I do have a question:
I would like the screen to violently shake whenever a particular event takes place similar to the Diablo2 event when you break the last of the seals.  I'm sure this has been done before using center view and was wondering if anyone could point me to an example map.  I'm sure I could experiment with something like this on my own, but it would be a huge help to have something as a reference especially the timings and location separation etc.

[Lavarinth]

Hmm, I can't think of an example map, but I do know 1x1 locations are the key. It's easier if they are part of a particular part of a cutscene over that of spell or something. Example for a cutscene:

Locations (1x1) on a map in the center screen area:

1  2  3
4  5  6
7  8  9

Move screen to location 1
Wait 50 milliseconds (guessing here)
Move screen to location 9
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 4
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 2
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 8
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 6
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 7
Wait 50 milliseconds
Move screen to location 3
Wait 50 milliseconds
etc.

See it visually in your head?

As for, say, having it shake the screen not at any particular location, just shake the screen in general, I'm not too sure about that off the top of my head.

[bajadulce]

Thnx Lav.  This works great for alerting players of this event.  I don't see how one could get the screen to shake at the general location of event, but the center of map seems effective enough.  I'm not sure if what I have setup is being seen by other players though.  I tried to view in a replay but nothing seemed to happen with the other player?  Maybe centerview doesn't display in replays?  I Guess the next step is to find someone to test or just build a computer player to activate the event and see what happens.  Computer players are always available. 

the 50 milliseconds seemed a bit slow lol. 

Code: Select all

Trigger("All players"){
Conditions:
	Deaths("Players", "Mining Platform", At least, 1);

Actions:
	Set Deaths("Players", "Mining Platform", Set To, 0);
	Remove Unit("All players", "Map Revealer");
	Play WAV("sound\\Misc\\Buzz.wav", 0);
	Center View("A");
	Center View("B");
	Play WAV("sound\\Misc\\Buzz.wav", 0);
	Center View("C");
	Center View("D");
	Center View("E");
	Play WAV("sound\\Misc\\Buzz.wav", 0);
	Center View("F");
	Center View("G");
	Center View("H");
	Create Unit("Player 1", "Map Revealer", 1, "tglobe");
	Create Unit("Player 2", "Map Revealer", 1, "tglobe");
	Create Unit("Player 3", "Map Revealer", 1, "tglobe");
	Create Unit("Player 4", "Map Revealer", 1, "tglobe");
	Center View("tglobe");
	Preserve Trigger();
	Comment("Shake screen and center view on Transcendent Globe");
}

[McGillards]

I stumbled on this while searching for a collapsing bridge for a starcraft map. Is it possible to do something like this without modding? Did anything ever happen with this project and does this bridge have a download or something in the database?

[Quirriff]

It's not possible for Starcraft, it's very possible For Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2.
But in Starcraft 1 doodads are indestructable, so you can't have a collapsing bridge. You might be able to do a visual trick with a land bridge some campaign creators have done with elevators in installation maps, but I doubt you could make an effective one.