Episode 0: Loyalty

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Yay! I took a break from SEN and found the motivation to make a new campaign! After making episodes 1 - 4 back in 2005, I always thought it would be fun to make a campaign about the early exploits of the hero character, Doodan. However, no idea came to me that gave me the motivation to actually sit down and make it until last month. Finally, an idea struck and I'm quite proud of the results. Please let me know what you think!!!

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Specifications

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-Players
•Single-player campaign
•10 missions
•Protoss perspective

-Map tileset
•Multiple tilesets used

-Map size
•Multiple map sizes used

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Storyline / Introduction

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While episodes 1 - 4 deal with the end of Doodan's career as a Protoss leader, episode 0 deals with the beginning of his distinguished career. Here's the basic story: The Protoss are experiencing a vespene gas shortage. Their initial attempts to find resources on other planets and peacefully negotiate deals with the Protoss living on government-protected land prove futile. It's right about then that our hero Doodan has been making a name for himself as a leader on the battlefield, and so he is sent to secure vespene from protected land on Aiur as well as find out what happened to the expedition that went hunting for gas on other worlds. In the process, Doodan's loyalty, as well as the loyalty of those around him, will be put to the test.

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-Features
This campaign is 10 missions long. I stayed away from the RPG-style elements from The Saga of Doodan and stuck to a bit more traditional campaign model. However, even the more straight-forward missions have at least a little bit of a twist to them. You'll always command at least 1 hero and you'll often have allied computers on your side.

-What's new in your map that others have not done before?
Like I said, it's a pretty straight-forward campaign. However, I feel like I spiced up the traditional-style missions sufficiently and I hope that the story will keep the interest of the player. Since making a prologue episode forced me to alter a couple of minor plot details in the main storyline, I will post updated versions of episodes 1 - 4 at a later date.

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Details

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-Characters
•Doodan: He's one of three rising stars fresh out of the Protoss Royal Guard and the war for resources will prove to be a test of his military skill and morality.
•Mais: The elder commander of the Protoss Royal Guard. He is fiercely loyal to his superiors and his most promising pupils.
•King Cobb: Ruler of the Protoss. He too is a fresh face on the scene, as he has recently succeeded the throne after his father's sudden death. His arrogance has gradually weathered his reputation amongst his people.
•Cornelius: He is Doodan's oldest friend from the Royal Guard. While he respects and admires Doodan, he also envies his abilities and has trouble coping with his friend and others stealing his spotlight.
•Crizzle: He is the third prodigy from the Royal Guard. He was something of a rival for Doodan and Cornelius as they were coming up, although the three share a tenuous friendship in the present. He has trouble respecting authority.
•Phannon: He is the longest-serving and most respected Protoss general in recent history. He was the first one called upon to find a solution to the vespene gas shortage.

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Screenshots / Demo

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[attach=4478]
As you can see, there have been some resource problems.

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So Doodan and some friendly Terrans will scrape up whatever they can...

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Until they hit the mother-load.

[attach=4481]
They're not the only ones with an agenda, though...

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There is no shortage of enemies...

[attach=4483]
And things will get ugly...

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Very ugly...

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Before they get better.

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Download

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http://www.filefront.com/14498613/00%20Loyalty.zip

Attachments:

Post has been edited 6 time(s), last time on Sep 9 2009, 7:17 pm by Doodan.

Hell, it's about time!

Will check out immediately. Hopefully it'll live up to what I remember from your old campaigns <3

DO WANT!
I am so sick of mediocre campaigns, and I always find CC's offerings to be too dry. This should be awesome.

Edit: Mediafire mirror for people (read: Me.) who hate filefront: http://www.mediafire.com/?imjg3rtimi0

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Sep 9 2009, 7:32 pm by Excalibur.

Thanks for that, Ex. Let me know what you guys think as soon as you can.

Was awesome, but I had some issues:
Warp Gate mission hinged on you MCing the Dropship. I think there was a respawn for it, but such a mechanic shouldn't have been used in the first place.

Last mission, allies were useless, enemies were ruthless. The AIs needed to be evened out. The resource shortage was overplayed in the map, I had to cheat to get anywhere in the mission.

Also on almost all the mission, the mineral formations were god awful. I know campaigns use decorative mineral formations as opposed to balanced ones, but when your CC has to be 5 squares further than normal from the bulk of the cash, its not decorative, its just a pain in the ass.

Aside from that, I loved it Dood.

I would've liked to see an Installation mission where we helped the Terrans take back their infested facility. When I first saw the colonies and infested terrans around those mech cave doodads I thought 'OH HEY INSTALLATION MISSION NEXT MAYBE? ' and was sorely disappointed.

I guess if I realllllly wanted to get nit-picky, some of the dialogue was a little silly, and the terrain/doodads could've been better. But I'm a terrain guy so of course I'm gonna be focused on that.

Do you mean that there should not have been a respawn or that the mission should not have depended upon MCing a dropship? It did cross my mind that I perhaps should have had a character say "If only we had a transport to get across" or something like that. You think that would have made it better?


Hmm, while I was testing the last mission, I did not have too much trouble with the AI or the resources. Of course, I designed the level and thus know where everything is, how to deal with it, etc. However, I did have some difficulty with the main Protoss enemy and their numerous dark archons. I might give the allied comps a boost in AI. Any suggestions on how to improve the mineral situation? I do want there to be a shortage that forces the player to deal with getting resources in unusual ways for story purposes, so keep that in mind. But if it's way too frustrating, please let me know what you think will help.


I suspect mission #5 is one of the ones you're referring too. As I'm sure you noticed, I intentionally forced the player to build almost nothing while scraping what little resources there were on the coast as they make their way to the pre-built base. But could you give me some examples on other levels? Or level 5 if you found it way too annoying?


Sorry to disappoint your hopes for an installation level. If you've played the other campaigns, you might remember that the Zerg succeed in their second attempt to break out of Terran captivity and wreak all sorts of havoc in Episode 2. This was their first failed attempt. I had initially planned to not feature Zerg at all in this campaign, but when I was designing mission 4, I thought that it might be cool for the Zerg to make a brief appearance and for the characters to forget about them for a couple of decades until they raise hell again.

Any examples you'd like to give on silly dialogue or sloppy terrain?

Also, what did you think of the overall storyline? Was it surprising, satisfying, interesting? Or not?

I hope it was at least better than those mediocre campaigns you mentioned. Thank you thank you thank you for your comments!

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Sep 11 2009, 7:28 am by Doodan.

Hehe, mission 2 was good fun. It was so easy to get bases with hallucinations + a dropship with Doodan in it

I'm going to slowly make my way through this campaign when I have free time and post a replay pack when I'm done. It's looking good so far though.

Do you mean that there should not have been a respawn or that the mission should not have depended upon MCing a dropship? It did cross my mind that I perhaps should have had a character say "If only we had a transport to get across" or something like that. You think that would have made it better?
I meant remove the MC dropship mechanic all together. Alternatively, you could have made a few dropships and had Doodan say 'We'll need to mindcontrol one of those transports to get accross!'

Hmm, while I was testing the last mission, I did not have too much trouble with the AI or the resources. Of course, I designed the level and thus know where everything is, how to deal with it, etc. However, I did have some difficulty with the main Protoss enemy and their numerous dark archons. I might give the allied comps a boost in AI. Any suggestions on how to improve the mineral situation? I do want there to be a shortage that forces the player to deal with getting resources in unusual ways for story purposes, so keep that in mind. But if it's way too frustrating, please let me know what you think will help.
In my play, I needed to defend the Terran ally because he was getting his ass handed to him. This took money away from me since I chose to do it with some cannons. Then Mais's base did very little after he died, if anything. I don't know if that was intentional. Overall the enemy AIs attacked a good deal with good forces while my allies kind of sent little suicide squads.

As for the resources, WAY TOO LITTLE TO GET ANYTHING DONE. Add more resources to the expansions around the map, and make them 500+ in value only if you want to keep on this low resource thing. Hell add more expands. But it was just god awful trying to work with such little minerals. Not even Blizz did it to us THAT bad.


I suspect mission #5 is one of the ones you're referring too. As I'm sure you noticed, I intentionally forced the player to build almost nothing while scraping what little resources there were on the coast as they make their way to the pre-built base. But could you give me some examples on other levels? Or level 5 if you found it way too annoying?
Every. Single. Mission. The CC was always further away than it had to be. I can maybe think of 2 expands that weren't like that, and that's it.

Any examples you'd like to give on silly dialogue or sloppy terrain?

Also, what did you think of the overall storyline? Was it surprising, satisfying, interesting? Or not?

I hope it was at least better than those mediocre campaigns you mentioned. Thank you thank you thank you for your comments!
It isn't so much your doodading (or lack thereof) but the way your cliff formations are lots of straight lines, unnatural, and paths between two objectives are very linear and uninteresting. I'd like to see more bridges, more winding paths, and generally more varied terrain, with more doodads. As I said, I am a stickler on this because I am a terrain guy, and again, this applies to nearly every mission for me, because I saw in every single one ways to improve the terrain. I'm sorry that I'm too lazy to open them all up right now and give specifics.

As for dialogue, I think if you replay it yourself Dood, you'll see a few weak lines. They were obvious little things, and a lot of things you wouldn't expect a protoss to say or word in that way.

Overall it was great, I loved it. Much better than the CC campaigns.

Yeah, the dropship level is complete bs. I spent a good 30 minutes or so just trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. In the end I used black sheep wall to find this:

Oh wow, that is a problem. I will fix it.

Thanks for letting me know.