Campaign Creations

I still think the effect that 80-90 official missions will be overwhelming and intimidating for most mapmakers, but we'll see what happens when the game is actually out. I hope I'm proven wrong. 

[imgwh 640x480]http://www.starcraftwire.net/gallery/da ... olsom2.jpg[/imgwh]

The new hospital ship can be seen here, with a more appropriate skin.
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.starcraftwire.net/gallery/da ... ara011.jpg[/imgwh]

[imgwh 640x480]http://www.starcraftwire.net/gallery/da ... Folsom.jpg[/imgwh]

Lots of Colossi here. Did anyone think they looked less than effective in the new gameplay movies? They died fast and barely killed anything, even with multiple beams...
[imgwh 640x480]http://www.starcraftwire.net/gallery/da ... olsom2.jpg[/imgwh]

It'll only be intimidating for mapmakers if they're retarded.

That's their stalker rehaul? It still looks like a crypt fiend, and nothing like the concept art they said they were going to base it on.

Without the player color glows, a lot of Protoss stuff, especially the pylon, are hard to see the colors on.

And why on earth is the grass, dirt, and sand so shiny? Especially the grass in those new foresty shots.  Where did the Protoss shine go? What the hell is going on!?

At least they started fixing the horrible cliff tiles. They should have just made all of them static meshes, like the Asphalt and Platform ones, though.

Doctor Doack wrote: It'll only be intimidating for mapmakers if they're retarded.

That could very well be case. To me, new challenges are where it's at, trying to make something original at all costs, but maybe I'm underesmating the rest of mapmakers out there. Who knows 

And yeah, the new stalker is very disappointing, I didn't even notice it was a new model until someone told me so. I agree about the player colors on the Protoss, too. Btw, doesn't the nightstalker look a little out of place and strange for its role? It looks like an attack ship, but it's supposed to be an aereal spellcaster... wtf. And it looks a little Protoss-ish too, it almost looks like a reskinned, smaller Arbiter (although that could be justified by the lore and stuff).

Bah, I doubt the 80-90 official missions will be intimidating to map makers.  I started playing with StarEdit back in the day because it looked like it was fun (It was!).  I loved the WarCraft II map editor and made tonnes of little maps with that thing.  No way in heck I was going to miss out on the chance to play around with StarEdit.  Was my main goal to create a campaign just like Blizzard's?  No!  Maybe I was just used to the days of WC2 when they could have special mission objectives like "bring the hero to the circle of power" and I couldn't.  I just wanted to make a silly campaign where me and my friends teamed up with Zeratul and Jim Raynor and battled random Zerg and Evil Terrans.

Personally, I think the wait times between Episodes is just going to increase the demand and intrest in Player-made campaigns.

The only big thing I see is that Player-Made campaigns and Official-Campaigns are just going to have a big style difference.  They get lots of big cool CGI cutscenes, and we get lots of little in-game cutscenes for the same effect.  So what?  We're stylish and creative, we'll be able to think of something, I'm sure.

Regarding the Nightstalker/Nighthawk: Stolen Protoss Technology maybe?  But yeah, I've gotta agree, it doesn't match Terran design at all.

Nighthawk really doesn't look like a standard military terran unit, but it does fit in with more advanced "spec ops" kind of terran idea. It looks very fragile, though.

On campaigns - I don't think there will be that many sc2 campaigns, just as there wasn't many wc3 campaigns, for both the same purpose; our community sucks. I don't mean CC, I mean the entire Blizzard community really lacks writing and development talent, and all of the mapping talent goes into dota clones, anyway.

To speak to a few points in this thread, the main thing to consider when making a campaign is the tools you want to use.  If you don't have the ability to do motion capture or a team of pro's at your disposal, simply don't use those cinematic cut-scenes and instead use the actual game and work with the camera angles if you're worried about the Blizzard aspect.

If a campaign maker does want to shoot for Blizzard quality, only use the tools in which that endeavor can succeed (like Desler said, audio, sfx, acting, triggers, map design, story) and forget the rest.  Unless the editor has a built-in way to handle those in-game cinematics like the Raynor video or the Zeratul video (if that's rendered in-game), I guarantee I won't be going near them.  I'll stick with actual in-game cutscenes (without the cinematic aspect).  You can take that to the bank.

And to another point, 80-90 missions is nothing more than having a third installment in the original starcraft and broodwar right?  Starcraft and Broodwar each had about 30 missions.  SC2 just has one more expansion pack.  In terms of intimidating mapmakers, I don't know why it should.  Whether a mapmaker creates 3 linked missions or 30 or 100, it doesn't change what players look for:

-Fun
-Good Story
-Non-Detracting Added Extras

In that order.

If a mapmaker can't do high quality audio, don't stick it in the campaign (I don't think) as it will 'detract' from the player's experience and pull them out of the story and reduce the fun factor.  If a mapmaker can't do high quality in-game cinematics, don't do them for the same reason.  

http://www.wegame.com/watch/Zeratul_s_C ... gan_Cameo/

Extended Zeratul trailer.


Am I the only one that finds the difference between HT and DT weapon technologies kinda cool?

I think Blizzard is obsessed with the color Green.

Doctor Doack wrote: Nighthawk really doesn't look like a standard military terran unit, but it does fit in with more advanced "spec ops" kind of terran idea. It looks very fragile, though.

On campaigns - I don't think there will be that many sc2 campaigns, just as there wasn't many wc3 campaigns, for both the same purpose; our community sucks. I don't mean CC, I mean the entire Blizzard community really lacks writing and development talent, and all of the mapping talent goes into dota clones, anyway.

Nonsense.  It's not a 'lack of talent', its just that the requirements to make a campaign by an individual are extremely heavy.  Imagine yourself a newbie picking up an editor that will be more complex than WorldEdit.  Learning all the nuances, triggers and such is such a daunting task that the intimidation factor will probably scare away nine out of ten who even open the editor.  Assuming you can even manage to use the editor, you still have a huge task ahead of you.  Each individual maps, due to the advancement since StarEdit, is going to take hours upon hours if not days to -properly- terrain.  Then you are looking at more time coming up with a gameplay scenario which you can use with your story.  Doing all the trigger work requires a lot of testing, as I rarely had anything I did in WorldEdit work properly the first time.  Any sort of cutscenes you do require a lot of testing and retesting.  Same with gameplay scenarios. 

After ALL that, you still just have a map, not a campaign.  And a text based campaign at that, which while acceptable, isn't as immersible as a voice acted campaign.  If you want to go to the next level, you have to do voice acting and audio editing, which is another realm entirely, albeit far less complicated.  That in itself takes more than a decent amount of time to achieve decent results. 

These are just 'basics' too.  Any sort of modification work is going to entail an even larger commitment.  After all that, how many people with 'talent' have made it through?  At some point a lot of people who have a good idea may just quit due to the huge requirements and time sinks.  Because after all this, the only thing waiting on the other side is a bit of praise and criticism.  Lack of talent?  More like basic sanity.  Only 'certain' people (to put it kindly) would want to put so much time into something so trivial.

Well, people with talent aren't the ones that standard around humping their thumbs. They don't get talent by being handed everything. Otherwise no one would really claim they had talent, now.

Time commitment is a part of modding/mapping. If you can't commit yourself, don't even bother. Most people I know can commit tons of time to doing whatever. Anyone can learn anything, barring mental disabilities, if they have devotion. And if they have no devotion, then they can't have talent.

I am not unversed in what it takes to do this sort of thing.

Doctor Doack wrote: I am not unversed in what it takes to do this sort of thing.

Yes, if we were speaking privately I could have made a one sentence reply, but since this is a public forum, I felt the need to explain my answer in detail.

If we were speaking privately I probably wouldn't be slashing my wrists over the tremendous amount of typos I make.

Doctor Doack wrote: If we were speaking privately I probably wouldn't be slashing my wrists over the tremendous amount of typos I make.

Ah, but what a compliment it would be.  'Slashing his wrists, over me?  How thoughtful.'

In other news, I'm really curious what will happen when I try to make a second creep that uses that lava texture.

i'm leaning towards dudes falling through the BSP.