Campaign Creations

Whether a map, or mod, or simple adjustment. What was the first game you created something for and what was it?

I had to think for a while and it finally popped into my head. I did not initially own WarCraft II upon release, in fact it took years for me to get around to owning it after playing it occasionally at my cousin's house when I'd visit once every 3-6 months.

So, shockingly, my first source of modding entertaining came with Duke Nukem 3D. After bypassing the adult content lock by uninstalling and reinstalling the game, I started to mess with the map editor after seeing the icon to launch it. I printed out the 300+ pages of instructions and hole punched them into a binder and took it to school to read from front to back. Of course, I only got about 20 pages in before I said screw it started tinkering.

In the end, I made one map in Duke Nukem 3D, and of course due to not knowing jack about how to work the editor, nor what the definition of what a sprite even was at the time, it sucked. I attempted to create a maze of tunnels with monsters at every corner, it ended up being about three corners of long hallways and no monsters.

And so my interest in modding and mapping was born.

WarCraft 2 was pretty much the first modern PC game that I got, so that was the one for me.

Can't remember too much about it. You had a giant army of units and stuff on your side of the river, the badguys and their army was on the other side. Go beat them up. That was pretty much it.

The first game I actually made custom maps for was Age of Empires II. Then again, all I did was spam hundreds of red military units and hundreds of blue military units, press "Test Scenario", and observe the resulting carnage.

My first attempt at making a campaign was in AoEII's Star Wars clone (cwutididthar), Galactic Battlegrounds. I never even finished the first map, and I quickly abandoned it in favor of making stuff in StarCraft.

Not quite on the topic of firsts, but I think my best work was on the first part of a planned three-part campaign that dealt with the exploits of a UED remnant faction (for starters). I actually got one mission to the point where I would've been willing to publish it, and two other maps not far behind it. Sadly, my computer ate the whole thing, and despite attempts to restart the project it's never quite gotten off the ground. On the bright side, the main character for the campaign was so awesome that he's forced his way into every campaign I've designed since.

I believe the first map I made was a small, completely barren jungle map in which there were a bunch of random hero units against 1,000 floor traps.

Unlimited Adventures was where I cut my teeth on.

My first few dozen projects weren't mods, but rather small games. Side-scrollers, adventure games, first person shooters, all made using various game-making software. The first mod I made was for Starsiege, adding numerous new weapons, armor, and other components.

30CYBERDEMONS.wad

tipereth wrote:30CYBERDEMONS.wad

You have got to show me that sometime.

I remember three old maps of Age of Empires I (yes the first one) I made.

One of them being the smallest map (like one that you move a Scout around and find your opponent in 3-5 seconds max) divided by two with very limited resources. It was close enough to tech up fast but limited enough that you are likely to stay in Bronze age as you fight with the opponent on the opposite side of the map.

Another was just a 2 players-map where you had some siege units and other units and had to kill the whole enemy army along with tons of towers. Due to having so many fishing spots in the water section (purely as "animation") it lagged my 233 mhz computer considerably. :p

Finally one being some silly water map with tons of fish. You essentially had to pick a naval-favored civilization and duke it out. I did tend to favor Hitties for the +4 ship range even if you can't get Iron age's ships. On some of the extremities, there was some islands with tons of forests which had lots of gold and stone if you could use those catapult ships to cut your way in.

Lavarinth wrote:I had to think for a while and it finally popped into my head. I did not initially own WarCraft II upon release, in fact it took years for me to get around to owning it after playing it occasionally at my cousin's house when I'd visit once every 3-6 months.

Replace cousin's with family friend's and months with weekly and I had the same situation, Starcraft was totally referred to as Warcraft in space before any of us knew what it was.

Mapping started in Warcraft 2 usually involving me having obnoxious amounts of dragons, tried and failed to make a map in Doom at some point as well.

Modding was C&C Red Alert I believe doing some random crap I can't remember up until Starcraft after playing some of RCX's campaigns which shortly after that is when I started working with Mesk.

I'm trying to think which predates which. Though I'm pretty sure my first map was in StarCraft. I was like, "OH MY GOD! I CAN CREATE BATTLECRUISERS! LETS PUT EM EVERYWHERE!" I titled it, 'Big Battlecruiser War'. Of course, I was like, "Supply Limit, wtf." This was probably in the first month of SC mind you.

Either that, or a map for a game called Subspace, now called Continuum. It was a map that gave ships a lot of cool upgrades and slightly unique gameplay. I made a dud ship that couldn't move, but if people repelled you into the powerups, it would be the most powerful ship in the game. It was pretty popular, averaging about 20-30 players during peak hours playing it similtaneously, which was pretty good for that game during this period of it's lifespan. I loved that game.

Not sure which came first...

I modified some graphics in SimCity 2000, which actually had tileset mods.
I remember editing a resource in a Spectre Supreme demo (making any changes resulted in infinite ammo O_o)
But mostly I messed with Descent II weapon data. I never made a level, but I loved making the weapons home in, bounce off walls endlessly, and spawn more projectiles on impact.

When Starcraft came around, the first map I did anything with was... a modified version of The Hunters. With lots of minerals and gas. That's right, I made a version of Big Game Hunters before BGH was released, and I only did it to watch the AI players fight each other!

Marco wrote:now called Continuum.

Dread asks: What server?

That was so long ago, I fail to remember. It was only up for a few weeks, so I doubt it's anything he remembers.

StarCraft-wise my first map was an installation mission where you had to defend your ship from evil space pirates who were trying to take it over. It was partially voiced by my brother and I. I couldn't figure out how doors worked.

My first campaign was made shortly after Brood War was released. I asked a bunch of my friends: "Hey! Who wants to be in my campaign?" and went from there. Didn't have much of a plot. First we had to escape the Zerg as they took over the planet everyone one was on, then we battled some Evil Terrans who wanted to take over the Sector. Then it turned out that the Zerg from the first planet followed us, so we had to fight them again too.

RazorclawX wrote:Unlimited Adventures was where I cut my teeth on.

I remember that game! I played around with it a bit, but I could never figure out how to do anything in it, so I played more WarCraft II and Stronghold instead.