I recently found a way to extract the vanilla Starcraft and Brood War campaign maps off of the CDs, and I wanted to increase the difficulty (mildly) and convert them for multiplayer cooperative use.

The problem is, how would Terran mission 1, for example, work with multiple players? The only map that comes to mind that would work well with multiple players is vanilla Protoss mission 10.

Anyone have any ideas?

(If this has been done before, by the way, please link it so I don't waste a lot of time doing it myself )

If there's just 2 factions fighting each other you could let one of the players control the computer enemy. Or give one player the expansion as soon as the first player builds it.
Even if there's just 1 player you could split it up into builder, infantry and mech units much like "Verlorene Technologie" a german map. Maybe you know the english version "Lost Tech" or it's PvP variant "Lost Battle".

KrayZee did this with some other campaign.

I'd rather not do that, since most of the time, one player or the other has a massive disadvantage. Protoss mission 1, for example, the Zerg player could mow over the Protoss easily, early on, or kill that small force.

Maybe, but on some maps, it could hit a resource problem, and one player might wait ages to get his building.


Haven't tried that map, but if I understand correctly, how would the supply work, if one player controls the units, and one builds them. That'd be an interesting possibility, though.

@Kevin: Where can I get KrayZee's campaign?

Edit: Oh, what's everyone's stance on the sounds? The only way for them to work is to import the actual sounds into the map, but those add at least a meg to each map.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 4 2008, 2:28 pm by Grand_dracolich.

You could leave all the preplaced units under computer control and give the player just a hatch and deny him the option to expand.
Player 1 brings at least 1 Drone to 'base border'
Move all Drones at base border to 'start'
Move all Overlord at base border to 'start'
Display "No Expansion for you!"

If necessary make existing mineral spots pretty dried out, so he can only build a small force and has to make the best of it. I would even balance it so that he's bound to lose, but for him to win he must stay alive for x minutes.

It's just another option. Use it where appropriate. And balance it the way that he can only win if he expands quickly.

The builder controls Command center, 1 Barracks, 1 Starport, the medics, the ghosts (Nuke!), the vessels, turrets. Depots are equally split up between the factions.
Once he builds a factory, or the 2nd Starport those go to the Mech Player, once he builds the 2nd Barracks or a bunker those go to the infantry player.
The mech and infantry player then build their own units, and are given necessary tech as needed. For example if the builder builds an academy,
Give 1 academy at 'Preplaced' owned by P12 to the infantry player.

For Zerg just give the units, maybe divide between ground, air and builder.

For Protoss it's a bit difficult with the pylons if you want it perfect. But you could keep it simple and just center a location on a warpgate when it's built and give 1 pylon at this location from builder to infantry player. Chances are this will disable one of the builders cannons or Robotic facilities, but then he would just have to build another pylon and all is well. About the army factions' supply you could again give preplaced pylons to them to avoid disabled buildings.
You could split up between melee and spellcaster to the templar caste and ranged units to the warrior caste.

These are just rough sketches, but I'm sure you can work out the details. It would definitely add fun due to the necessary teamplay involved.

Wasn't there a way to also reference to sounds from the cd? I think you have to import another mpq to ScmDraft or something. Sorry that I can't be more specific, I just read it somewhere, but forgot about it. Never done it myself.

How do you plan on doing the transitions between missions? And how did you extract the maps, anyway?

And... Why don't you stack a copy of all the starting buildings for the second human player, double the number of minerals in each of the mineral fields, place a second Geyser next to all the starting Geysers, and give the computer some kind of epic advantage to make up for it? (eg. add a second computer for each computer in the normal version of the campaign and give him copies of the normal computer's buildings, like you did for the humans.)

Alternatively, you could make it like melee... Give both humans a CC/Nexus/Hatchery and do the same for the computers. You'd still need to double the minerals and copy the Geysers, and probably some other balance changes. You could also give the computers some starting buildings, especially defensive structures, to stop early rushes. Giving them some other advantage would be a good idea, probably. This would probably be the most fun version IMO.

(The reason you should add a second computer instead of giving the computer two of each building is that I don't think the AI would like that and would probably get confused.)

Since they'll be multiplayer, possibly hosted on Battle.net, there can't really be any transitions. Just . As for extracting them, copy Install.exe from the Starcraft of Brood War cds, rename them to .mpqs (you'd have to do that to get Starcraft to run without a cd, anyway), and open them with MPQView (WinMPQ won't read them correctly, for some reason). They're .chk files, so you can just open them with SCMDraft and save as .scm/.scx.

Because of the differences between missions, I'll use different solutions to multiplayer-ize them. It'll take quite a bit of doing. I'll post a project thread when I have some decent progress.

Edit: Odd... For some reason, the maps don't seem to be in Brood War's Install.exe. o.O

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 4 2008, 7:43 pm by Grand_dracolich.

I'll help with concepting and stuff if you want, but probably won't have time to do anything else 'cause I'm already doing BASW and tBoB and have one f*ck of a lot of school work.

Btw, maybe you could make it so that you can use all the units, rather than the limited set they give you in most of the campaign missions. (Except in maps where you can't build more units, of course.) I'm not sure if you should let the players use Brood War units/upgrades tho. (Although swapping the "hero" DTs they give you in the vanilla missions with normal DTs so the player can get DAs might be a good idea... Not sure what do do about researching DA spells tho lol). And more melee-style gameplay overall would be good.

(It occurs to me that most of the early maps will take a lot of changing to work as multiplayer maps, especially the Terran ones. Like that one where you have to build 10 Marines to win, for example. Or Installation maps and stuff. And, what are you going to do about heroes in maps with an odd number of heroes? Divide the heroes as evenly as possible and give the player who is short one hero a special unit [eg. another hero {probably a "generic" hero like Tassadar/Zeratul or a Hunter Killer or something, renamed} or possibly a Brood War unit in an otherwise vanilla mission] to compensate?

Whatever concept help anyone could give, I'd be really grateful. After I extract the rest of the maps, and tweak them to work fine without Brood War units and upgrades, I'll get started on converting them.

Of course, I still have no clue where those darn Brood War maps are.

Nah. Siege Tanks in Terran mission 3, and Battlecruisers in Terran mission 8, for example, wouldn't be incredibly fun.

Probably not. The UED developed the Medic, Valkyrie and Charon Boosters and they didn't arrive until long after the Overmind's death, and the Lurker, Devourer and Ultralisk upgrades were only developed after the Overmind's death, probably.

[quote=name:TassadarZeratul](Although swapping the "hero" DTs they give you in the vanilla missions with normal DTs so the player can get DAs might be a good idea... Not sure what do do about researching DA spells tho lol).[/url]Brood War manual: "These dire, volatile beings are so powerful that the Dark Templar have outlawed their creation for a thousand years. After the Zerg Swarm destroyed the planet Aiur, the Dark Templar have realized the necessity of their greatest weapons." I also doubt Corsairs would fit, since there weren't that many Dark Templar with Zeratul.

As for heroes, I don't think that'll be much of a problem.

I suppose you're right about the Brood War units, but it would still be fun... Maybe make it an option at the start of the maps? As for allowing the full unit set, I guess you're right there too.

So did you like my other idea? (Give the second human player a copy of all the starting buildings stacked on the normal starting buildings for that mission, and give the computer an epic advantage to compensate.)

micro and macro splits XDXD

For the Terran missions, it could bug out a bit if an idiot decided to lift up his command center. Also, it'd be hard to select an individual building, in a stack like that.

Man, I wish UMS could have an option for something like Team Melee mode.

I suppose you're right... You could just put copies of all the buildings near where they normally are in the campaign.

From my point of view this is pointless, because:

Fraction vs fraction will not work out well - imballance.

This leads us onto changing the whole idea and put it into co-operation only, but as you noticed yourself, it is impossible for some map. You could however enchance them a bit, adding more objectives.

Honestly what I'd love to see is a starcraft MP campaign with the co-operative mode available. Forces devided into almost 2 equal ones. If there is only one hero, then add another(maybe a custom one? Not necesarrily related to the SC plot, but give them a nice name and some background perhaps?) I could play over and over maps with my friend if we had two bases located in seperate locations(sometimes maybe next to each other) and some nice objectives, not only forcing you into direct combat, sometimes a quick sneak, steal, get-away mission. Surely when playing 2 vs the comp the map will be completed in a shorter time, therefore I'd once again reccomend you to add futher objectives in order to improve the gameplay.

A while ago I had been planning a campaign with support for up two three players, one Terran, one Protoss, and one Zerg, but no one was interested...

Actually, at some point I was going to work on a small precursor campaign, following Tassadar during the infestation of Chau Sara, the vanilla Terran and Zerg campaigns, and ending just before Protoss mission 4. I was just doing some research on the Starcraft Wiki to make sure I have the facts right, actually.

Also, cooperative versions of each map will is possible, but it'll be pretty tough. Each map will have to be cooperative in a different way, like in Terran mission 1, one player could control Raynor, the buildings and SCVs, and the other could control the marines.

It'd take quite a bit of work to get right, for most missions.

why don't you just make 1 person control the forces and the other guy controls the building and stuff

As I've said before, that would be pretty tricky to get right. Also, it'd practically eliminate the need for large amounts of supply depots/pylons/overlords.

I HAS EPIC IDEA! You know that one gamemode where you share units with your allies? Well, you could use that if you could get the preplaced units to work somehow, right? Well, why don't you mark the locations of the preplaced units with some Neutral unit (eg. mineral fields, geysers, or critters) and stack other units to indicate what type of unit to place, and for which player, then use a mod to add triggers that convert the stacked units into what they originally were? (If a unit doesn't have anything stacked on it, just leave it alone.)

That's not true